On Thu, 2005-08-25 at 13:47 -0700, Joshua A. Andler wrote:
*All submissions must be standards compliant (XHTML 1.0 Transitional & CSS) and render the same across all browsers (within reason of course).
Why Transitional? I think this is a really bad idea; Transitional DTDs are designed for when you are *transitioning* from a previous standard. If the website is being completely redesigned there is *no* reason not to use a strict DTD, other than laziness.
Why 1.0 Transitional? Because that's what we currently use. A while back I had said I wanted to convert us to Strict 1.1, but that was shot down due to _some_ compatibility reason (I don't recall what it was offhand). I just didn't want to go there again or do anything that would make major changes without approval. If others think it's fine to do 1.0 or 1.1 Strict, by all means I'm all for changing it.
Not, 1.1, 1.0. But yes, I think we should change it. I am an "all or nothing" type person, and would probably even favour using content negotiation to serve application/xhtml+xml, but let's not go there...
The current home page doesn't validate at the moment anyway, and validating with a script DTD doesn't produce that many more errors -- most of which would probably be fixed if the "template" was written as strict anyway.
Furthermore, the strict DTD is transitional-compatible, but not the other way around. Therefore, enforcing a strict DTD for the template wouldn't even mean we *have* to use a strict DTD in the actual site. You can't really argue with that.
Another thing is that it might be good to specify accessibility guidelines to aim for. Accessibility will *always* be down to human judgement to an extent, but it might be nice to say "try to follow the WCAG level 2" or something.
Accessibility is great, but inkscape isn't really the type of program that is able to cater to those with accessibility needs (namely visual needs, which is what they focus on most with accessibility). So, I can definitely specify that it needs to be accessible, it's just kinda overkill in this case (although basics like alt tags for images are good practice anyway, as are a couple other things accessibility brings to the table). So, does anyone want to chime in on what level of accessibility we should shoot for?
That's really a very narrow view of accessibility. What about visually impaired people (like Craig said), what about people who use devices other than a keyboard and a mouse, what about <bla bla bla insert accessibility rant>. Really, accessibility should be making [the website] as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking we're doing a great crime in this area at the moment, so perhaps you are right -- but perhaps it would be good just to say "please consider the accessibility of your design" or something similar.
Finally, I think you absolutely must define the browsers in which is must perform well in. Surely you don't want to support NN 4? What about really uncommon browsers? It's better to have a list I think. (When I say "support" I really mean "serve CSS to".)
I do note that it should support all browsers within reason. If we start to specify which ones (except for maybe saying "all modern browsers"), it will start a flood of "what about obscure browser X version Y?" comments. And I think that the standards compliance will take care of Lynx. ;)
If you really feel I need to specify, what ones would you like for me to list? Mozilla 1.x, Firefox 1.x, IE 5.5+, Opera 7+, Safari, Konquerer, Epiphany... do you want lower version numbers? more browsers listed? what about TV based browsers? and mobile device browsers? what else?
I guess you are right. I prefer to have things set in stone, but trying to define an acceptable set of version numbers would probably just fuel a flame war, so maybe it's better to just use judgement as you say.