RE: For want of a better word

Your home page flows OK. It's already small, direct and generally undecorated. 
On a big screen it looks a bit lonely. But at least the characters can be made 
bigger with no negative impact.

The variations on your page appear to have scaled well. They still convey the 
original content, though the style has changed somewhat. Let's not confuse style 
with substance.

I'd say the UA scaled the page. And keep in mind that, to me, the UA can be 
distributed anwhere from the origin to the device, so there are plenty of places 
where (some of) the scaling can take place.

> If people made webpages like mine, would it need adaption? =)

Probably. The mouse-overs on your blog make text jump in the latest version of 
IE. And if I make the window narrow like a PDA, the table layout causes cells to 
move to unusual positions. Once upon a time I wouldn't trust a tool to craft my 
markup, now I don't trust myself. The bottom line: you can't anticipate all of
the ways your markup will be used, so just make it easier for something else to
understand and adapt it. The adaptation part is tricky, but some of us have
already done it (e.g. my company). The "understand" bit is very tricky, and to
that end we (W3C DIWG) plan some initiatives that may help adaptation processes
understand the content they're adapting. I won't comment any more on that for
a few weeks, but "watch this space", as they say. :-)

---Rotan


-----Original Message-----
From: Kai Hendry [mailto:hendry@cs.helsinki.fi]
Sent: 08 June 2004 14:37
To: Rotan Hanrahan
Cc: www-di@w3.org
Subject: Re: For want of a better word


On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 02:06:42PM +0100, Rotan Hanrahan wrote:
> I don't think Dave intended the diagram to be an example, but merely
> an eye-catching picture to introduce his discussion. One wouldn't use
> image scaling to scale a page that was originally composed for a big
> screen, unless you're client also possessed pan/zoom abilities. And
> even then, one can get lost trying to understand a big page with
> pan/zoom.  I've tried such technologies in the past, and while
> initially impressive, one soon gets "tunnel vision" sensations.

Ok, that CNET page is a bad example as its complex multi-columned design
isn't good practice IMO. It's emulating a magazine, when it's the web.
There is big difference in the medium. Ok, that's debatable... lets move
on.

What about a page like my homepage:
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/hendry/

Text is allowed to flow, so there should be no need for panning
horizontally (to a degree).

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/hendry/work/thesis/pictures/simulator1.bmp
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/hendry/work/thesis/pictures/6600-xhmtl-1.jpg
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/hendry/work/thesis/pictures/6600-opera-1.jpg

Has my XHTML web page scaled? 
Has the UA scaled the web page correctly?
Or should I ask if the device has correctly scaled it?

> Scaling brings its own problems, and adaptation (possibly involving
> restructuring and other manipulations) might be the only viable
> approach.

If people made webpages like mine, would it need adaption? =)

> And another aside: the people who design fonts will tell you that you
> can't arbitrarily change the scaling of characters. The quality of the
> result depends on many factors, including the absolute pixel
> resolution, the pixel orientation, the number of curve points in the
> glyphs etc. So you might find that a font at 120% is not as legible as
> the same font at 112% on a particular device. This peculiarity varies
> according to the device, the font, the colours, the use of
> anti-aliasing, etc....

I've noticed this actually. :/

If we have problems scaling text (seemingly), isn't that worrying for
device independence? Should we not be really getting text right before
moving on?

Otherwise can I reasonably suggest that people do not touch their font
size settings in pursuit of device independence? Or tell UA vendors to
ignore CSS with font-size definitions?

Received on Tuesday, 8 June 2004 11:11:41 UTC