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I think that FIRST will learn some things from this year and make the process better next year. Also, i'd think that they would listen to our ideas, so any more? |
w3c compliance isn't hard.
the only thing most people have to lose is those customized scrollbar colors (*cough*propietary*cough*) In all actuality, getting something to comply with the letter of the specs is maybe 30 minutes of work (provided your site has a templating system inplace). Complying with the SPIRIT of the specs though... I'd love to see how many people would enter for that... |
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I my opinion, from what you said, it looks like some good portions of your site are not done by students.. just because they can't do it... Everyone loves your pages, and the things you accomplish are great.. But... this gives quite the unfair advantage from many teams... who likewise cannot do the kind of things your mentors can. That sort of thing isn't quite fair. |
I know the season is over, but has anyone done any more with this? It would be good to make sure something is done about this for next year.
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On a side note W3C compliance would be a pain for me to deal with, all my programming is messy, messy, messy. It's like a maze in there. |
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My thought is: There really are very few sites that actually are W3C compliant. (Heck, www.usfirst.org doesn't even begin to be w3c... it's doctype is missing (ex: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> ) , and cd is missing a content type (ex: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">) ) If two major first sites don't begin to meet the first two "points" of W3C, why should I have to worry about my every tag? However, I would recommend viewing a site it a few types of browsers (IE, Netscape, Mozilla, ...) with at different sizes (800x600, 1024x786) using different speeds (56k, 128k, 500k, ...) to make sure that a site can be viewed by most people. |
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--Petey |
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There's a problem with with making w3c compliance mandatory. If you use the W3C validator on their website, you will find that hardly anything with coding on it--that is, anything other than straight up HTML--fails to validate. This includes www.theforceteam.com, www.chiefdelphi.com, www.amazon.com, and www.cnn.com. Thus, it is probable that, if textbook w3c compliance was mandatory, a site written in four minutes on notepad would have to win over something made in DreamWeaver over a course of two months. I think that only one question should be asked of the compatibility of the site: does it work in most browsers? If so, than it's fine. --Petey |
totally agree, all it matters is if the end user is able to see the website in thier browser. Or atleast most of the browsers out there. I would say if your website is compatible with IE, MOzilla and Netscape. the rest automatically will adapt. W3c doesnt do a good job updating their standards. ITs to hard for them to keep up with the new technologies that have been introduced in the recent years. So i dont think its a good idea to incorporate W3C as a standard.
~ A M X |
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My team won the webdesign competition for the Canadian Regional. http://www.stmichaelscollege.ca/robotics I thought the ballot system really did work at our regional (and I dont say that because Im biased to my team). All our teams were actually warned PRIOR to the competition about checking out all the websites. What I suggest for next year is to have a website voting system online. They should develop a component of the Team Managment System that allows you to visit each page and critique on every aspect. The system should be designed so that developers like myself could easily browse through the pages. Then not only will it be fair but it would allow for better organization of the votes and better statistic viewing at the end. BTW the XHSRobotics site is looking pretty cool :-) The background is awesome. :-) |
My 2 Cents
Here's my comments on the entirety (sp?) of the Web Site Design award.
As webmaster for my team, I took a quick look at the requirements and stuff for the award and had a few initial impressions, many of them aforementioned: a) It is VERY vague b) It really has no requirements/guidelines c) It can easily be construed as an invitation, no COMPETITION between teams to forego content in favor of design. Before anyone jumps on my back about the last point there, let me make my case. Especially with the existance of CD, there is really no reason for EVERY team out there to have a forum for discussion....if you want one, fine, but most teams could solve this with a much less bandwidth-intensive and more effective mailing list or something between team members. I noticed several teams' sites that include forums with maybe two or three posts per week between team members. What is the use? This is not a race to make people ooh and ahhh at your pages' use of new technology per se, but to use the web to effectively express the mission, ideas, and news about your team for the world to see. FLASH. For the most part, this is another waste of time and bandwidth. For its credit, there are team pages out there that use it effectively, and it can be used effectively. However, when all it serves to do is create an annoying and slow-loading intro or something like that.....all it is is flashy crap, not real content. The focus of this award should be perhaps content and effectiveness....something almost entirely antithetical to Flash use. Enough about Form vs. Function. About the awards' judging and whatnot: My team entered at the Chesapeake Regional (at which I arrived late) to find "oh-you have to fill this out, it's due in like 20 minutes", a form for the award. Onsite judging for web pages is almost impossible, and is extremely ineffective. Without web access on-site, you can't judge perhaps recent updates, design changes, etc., nor can you really without previous familiarity with other teams' pages and their content BY TEAM NUMBER, effectively off the top of your head vote and rate as if you have the pages in front of you. To top it off, when I went to hand in the form, they weren't even sure what to do with it....it took them five minutes to even figure that out.... The W3C compliant challenge is effectively moot....I doubt FIRST will implement that. However, here is my addition to the other challenge....make EVERY page backwards-compliant and TEST it THOROUGHLY in every browser you can get your hands on before you use it. This includes LYNX and old versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer. My personal browser of choice is iCab for Mac, and (sorry to the winner of the Canadian Regional's website award) I was able to tell how their page is designed to look, but it loads very improperly in that and other browsers I have used. Don't assume that everyone has the (or is even capable of having) the latest browsers and every plugin under the sun. Many users out there are still using old PCs and Macs with antiquated browsers to browse the internet - and a good design job will work well in their Netscape 1.1 or whatever just as well as Internet Explorer 6 on Windoze XP. A bad one (or a rushed one) will look bad on an old browser, and to a decent web designer will look just as bad on a new one. The old maxim still applies - KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).....don't try to go for form over function. Functionality first, (i.e. content, actual information) over bells and whistles. And, of course, remember that the average American attention span is very short....for those of us still on dialup or with slow computers, an alternative web page is just a click away........ Sorry this post is so long.... Aaron Knight Webmaster and Videographer Team 891: Neverending Chaos... http://first891.topcities.com CHAMPIONSHIP PICTURES HAVE BEEN POSTED!!!!!! |
Re: My 2 Cents
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iCab, eh? I'll have to check it out. I use Safari because it's fast as lightning, but it's about as compatible as iMovie 3 with DOS. --Petey |
I too believe that the website award this year was week.
The reason I believe that team 19 won, is because it was first on the ballet. No other reason Did you look at all the websites before you left? I didn't, because I didn't have time. So if teams didn't look at it, whats the point on scoring them. What I believe needs to be done is that first should have a computer there with every website in chronological order, so when teams are voting, they can see what is good and what is not. There should be a set deadline where your team packs its entire website in a .zip file and send it to FIRST. When you do this you eliminate the need for a web connection, and the possibility that the server might be down. |
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