h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to my records, i have had 2 posts hidden since i was put on premod. Only one of those was actually failed by pre-mod, the other was passed by the moderator, because there was nothing wrong with it, and then someone yikesed it and it got hidden. The other was a little blunt, and not very nice, but considering i wasn't talking to a very nice person, i don't think anyone can really complain. It was certainly not against the house rules.

Tango

To answer post 15 - the Beeb have always supported more than just IE since I've been working for them, they support other browsers as well, although IE is the biggy. There's a list of what browsers they support to what level, but I haven't been able to find it on the public BBC site so I can't give you any info on that (unless someone finds it public-facing I have to assume it's confidential). By platforms I mean mobile phones, interactive television etc. If they insist on saying 'all platforms' that should include digiboxes.

Indeed, if it *is* beeb policy to support all platforms, they certainly should be supporting digiboxes, however i'm pretty sure we have been told in the past (after feature suggests and bug reports) that large amounts of time will not be spent doing/fixing something that will only benefit non-IE browsers, because beeb policy is only to support IE. I'm on 1/2 term at the moment, so i might find time to find a example.

Tango

When I started at h2g2 I was told it was Netscape 4.7 and IE 5 for h2g2 - so that's what was installed on my pc. When testing moderation tools, Mark told me that they didn'thave to work on Opera because it wasn't supported, although obviously that was a long time ago.

But because of the SSO and digibox thing I went to look it up, especially after someone very important mentioned the *all platforms* thing.I coudl only find a browser page though.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/webdev/AppE.Browser_Support_Standards.htm

It's not as pick as the internal list. But it does show that it supports more than only IE.

pick? I meant big...

It also predicts it's own deprecation: "NB. An updated version of this standard is being prepared and should be available in Q3 2003."

As I said before, ideals are one thing but the way in which the BBC staff (or external contractors) are currently programming shows that they are *not* taking sufficient care over compatibility and are instead deliberately adding unnecessary stuff which is already known to cause problems. These are reasonably well documented issues about which they should be aware if they are professional programmers and site designers (in either the formal qualification or right attitude sense of "professional").

From <./>/guidelines/webdev/AppE.Browser_Support_Standards.htm</.>: "Site navigation MUST be accessible without relying upon the availability of JavaScript, ECMAScript, VBScript, Flash or Cascading Style Sheets."

Surely this implies that a secondary, HTML-only SSO login form should be provided?

Rho

ditto for quite a few other things.

Tango

I'm reading a technical book right now on web page and site design --and it warns about too much graphical and other techical additions to them that can cause sluggish page reloads. I also wonder why you chose bold over emphasize (etc) for those you chose have been superceded for those who use other kinds of browsers....but then maybe that's what the 'text' option is for.

Also, I was wondering if you were going to have an IRC, realtime chat engine...one that could delete/refresh itself. Wouldn't that allow discussions of a more immediate nature, that wouldn't have to be automatically archived, and thus clogging the system down?

Perhaps my questions and input is way too naive, and please forgive any possible annoyance in that department.

You all have an awesome, wonderful site that allows folks of all talents to be able to have a go at their input on the WWW. Thanks.

The BBC already have a real-time chat system: Connector. It's currently being strongly promoted on the Cult section of the site, eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/.

spelugx

Thanks for the response. Now how about promoting that kind of a chat engine for h2g2? The one they have is not pertinetn to this one is it?

It is unlikely that Connector will ever be used in h2g2. However you can ignore the themeing of the system and just use it to chat.

This is mainly becuase h2g2 isn't based around chat. Discussion is an important part of building the guide, and much of the community is based around that: discussion. Very little of the relevant (to the guide) community is 'chat'.

spelugx

When connector was first being tested we discussed the possibility of it being used on h2g2 in the offsite mailing list, it was fairly conclusively thought of as a bad idea IIRC. Everything being permanent is a key thing for h2g2.

Tango

Is fas as I am concerned, all web-site developers should be FORCED to test their sites with Lynx

"all web-site developers should be FORCED to test their sites with Lynx"

hear, here! [pick whichever spelling you prefer ]. It would turn up all sorts of accessibility issues - most screen-reader problems as well, I should think.

I wonder what "Bobby" would think of h2g2 etc. No, not a person, but a semi-automated accessibility checker - http://bobby.watchfire.com

I always liked the idea of Connector on h2g2. When I had a chat with some of the people who run it, it looks like it might be very difficult because we use A numbers for pages, and it looked for names at the time. Maybe it's different now.

hiya well i tryed months ago to
get on here but could not get off the front page but now its much better keep up the good work m8