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A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Allen




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Please check out this site. Uses javascript and permits the user to adjust t
he
appearance of their page.

http://swnews.net/besant-yoga


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Nico Schuyt




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Allen wrote:
quote:

> Please check out this site. Uses javascript and permits the user to
> adjust the appearance of their page.
> http://swnews.net/besant-yoga


Very nice experiment!
Disadvantage is it relies to much on client side scripting. Did you consider
to use CSS in combination with e.g. PHP to change the stylesheet?
Probably a lot easier and more reliable than the js-solution.
Regards, Nico


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

kchayka




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Allen wrote:

quote:

> Please check out this site. Uses javascript and permits the user to adjust
 the
> appearance of their page.
>
> http://swnews.net/besant-yoga


Your attempt at customizing the page for the user may be
well-intentioned, but the delivery isn't optimal.  If you set no
font-size at all, the visitor will get their (preferred) default text
size.  If you set no font-family at all, the visitor will get their
default font.  All this with no effort on either your part or your
visitors. :)

If you really want to help your users, then point to a page that
instructs them how to change the text size and/or font preferences in
their browser.  This is something they can use anywhere, not just at
this site.

BTW, the rest of the site is pretty much inaccessible with JavaScript
disabled.  This is bad.  JS should be an optional embellishment, not a
requirement.

--
To email a reply, remove (dash)un(dash).  Mail sent to the un
address is considered spam and automatically deleted.


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Allen




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Nico Schuyt wrote:

quote:

> Allen wrote: 
>
> Very nice experiment!
> Disadvantage is it relies to much on client side scripting. Did you consid
er
> to use CSS in combination with e.g. PHP to change the stylesheet?
> Probably a lot easier and more reliable than the js-solution.
> Regards, Nico


I hadn't used Javascript before this project, but I wanted more interactive
menus and it snowballed from there when I discovered that most (maybe all?)
browsers will cache .js files. I even made the html part of the menu display
 an
included javascript file, and all it does is document.write ('heml code') fo
r
each line of html. The only variables are the items wich are put in a local
cookie. I aolso tried server side includes to put the menu-drawing html in a
file to be included as part of each page, but that slowed down the server.


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Allen




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
kchayka wrote:

quote:

> Allen wrote:
> 
>
> Your attempt at customizing the page for the user may be
> well-intentioned, but the delivery isn't optimal.  If you set no
> font-size at all, the visitor will get their (preferred) default text
> size.  If you set no font-family at all, the visitor will get their
> default font.  All this with no effort on either your part or your
> visitors. :)
>
> If you really want to help your users, then point to a page that
> instructs them how to change the text size and/or font preferences in
> their browser.  This is something they can use anywhere, not just at
> this site.
>
> BTW, the rest of the site is pretty much inaccessible with JavaScript
> disabled.  This is bad.  JS should be an optional embellishment, not a
> requirement.
>

I should show a warning message if the user doesn't have javascript enabled,
that's for sure. But I don't want to teach people how to change fonts in the
ir
browser preferences.

Also, the whitespage margin on each side of the text is important for
readability if people have wide windows and also if they are working with
low-res (narrow) windows.


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Toby A Inkster




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Allen wrote:

quote:

> I hadn't used Javascript before this project, but I wanted more interactiv
e
> menus and it snowballed from there when I discovered that most (maybe all?
)
> browsers will cache .js files.


The problem is though that 10-15% of human users seem to have Javascript
disabled, as well as 100% of Googlebot users.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me - http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/?page=132


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Toby A Inkster




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Allen wrote:

quote:

> http://swnews.net/besant-yoga


It might be handy to include a proper next link on each page. To do this,
in the <head>...</head> area:

<link rel="next" href="nextpage.html">

This will mainly be handy for Opera users, who can use space bar to scroll
down the page, and when they reach the bottom, space bar to go on to the
next page!

It will also be of use to Lynx, Links and Mozilla users, who will see a
"Next" button on their navigation toolbar or similar.

It will have no adverse effect on any other browsers (well, apart from
the extra 40 bytes or so that the link would add to the pages, but that is
so tiny it's not worth considering.)

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me - http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/?page=132


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

kchayka




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Allen wrote:

quote:

> kchayka wrote:
> 
> I should show a warning message if the user doesn't have javascript enable
d,
> that's for sure.


No, you should not rely on JS for vital features, like navigation.

quote:

> But I don't want to teach people how to change fonts in their
> browser preferences.


Well OK, but consider that your particular selections are awfully
limiting.  I'd much rather use a sans-serif font if I'm going to be
reading large amounts of text on screen.  You don't have any sans-serif
fonts listed, let alone my preferred one.  You don't have my preferred
serif font listed, either.  I would do better ignoring your fonts
altogether, methinks.

As for the size, if you don't set any size at all, the user's preferred
size will be used by default and they won't likely need to change it at
all.  All you are doing is setting it up so they may *have* to change it
unnecessarily.

BTW, none of these font changes work when I refuse your cookies.

quote:

> Also, the whitespage margin on each side of the text is important for
> readability if people have wide windows and also if they are working with
> low-res (narrow) windows.


Um, I believe that most folks know how to adjust their browser window
size for optimal reading of long lines.  The likelihood that this is the
only site even one of your visitors will ever want to adjust is
virtually zero.

From one of your other posts it sounds like it is more important to you
to use these JS gimmicks you just learned than for the user to have a
pleasant browsing experience.  You should seriously reconsider.  If
nothing else, you need a link to a separate TOC page they can use when
JS is disabled, coded as a <link> element and/or a plain-text link in
the page body.  I suggest using both.

--
To email a reply, remove (dash)un(dash).  Mail sent to the un
address is considered spam and automatically deleted.


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Allen




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
Toby A Inkster wrote:

quote:

> Allen wrote:
> 
>
> It might be handy to include a proper next link on each page. To do this,
> in the <head>...</head> area:
>
> <link rel="next" href="nextpage.html">
>
> This will mainly be handy for Opera users, who can use space bar to scroll
> down the page, and when they reach the bottom, space bar to go on to the
> next page!
>
> It will also be of use to Lynx, Links and Mozilla users, who will see a
> "Next" button on their navigation toolbar or similar.
>
> It will have no adverse effect on any other browsers (well, apart from
> the extra 40 bytes or so that the link would add to the pages, but that is
> so tiny it's not worth considering.)
>

Thanks. I did that and it works well in Netscape!


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Re: A Better Way to Read Books?
 

Allen




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Old Post  12-04-03 - 12:29 AM   
kchayka wrote:

quote:

> Allen wrote:
> 
>
> From one of your other posts it sounds like it is more important to you
> to use these JS gimmicks you just learned than for the user to have a
> pleasant browsing experience.  You should seriously reconsider.  If
> nothing else, you need a link to a separate TOC page they can use when
> JS is disabled, coded as a <link> element and/or a plain-text link in
> the page body.  I suggest using both.
>

I did code in a few <noscript> additions today. Funny how a <noscript> in th
e
<head> area to fetch stylesheets will not validate at w3c, but seems to work
 on
all my browsers. I left it in for now, but will probably remove it in the
future.

Anyway, I'm happy with the font choices I've made. There are alternatives wh
ich
led me to want to do this project such as:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/hortulan.htm which does not look much differ
ent
than most long documents on the web.


I found this today: http://pdreader.org/ . Server-side everything, except fo
r a
few javascript navigation aids. It seems they put the text of their books in
to
a database, which is fed out to the client in what they feel are pages. It i
s
an ambitious project, but readability is awful with an overload of colorful
navigation doo-dads. They will let you chose Arial! Perhaps you will lighten
 up
on Javascript when Microsoft finally reases an IE update which lets you turn
off javascript pop-up windows.


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