in reply to Re^6: Web forum markup language and the Monastery ([[...]])
in thread Web forum markup language and the Monastery

You start saving significant bytes once you say:

<h1>Heading</h1>

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With some CSS for the heading, compared to:

<p><font size="+2" color="red">Heading</font></p>

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On every single heading. On any modern (HTTP/1.1-compliant) HTTP server and client, the connection will be left open, making cost of the extra request for the cache-check nearly zero.

"There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.

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Re^8: Web forum markup language and the Monastery ([[...]])
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 17, 2005 at 16:16 UTC
    Let's see. Just assume the perlmonks.org is the fastest server in the world, and it replies to requests instantly (as we all notice). I still have a roundtrip time to perlmonks of about 100ms. That's the time that's always lost to do a request. (For the sake of the argument, I leave off the processing time of the proxy I'm using). I also get a throughput of about 75kb/s. That means, in 100ms, you could have added an extra 7.5kb. That would be more than 200 of those headings.

    Note that I'm not suggesting to not use CSS. But using CSS to "save bytes" sounds like premature optimization. If you want to save bytes, turn off the nodelets for AMs. Remove the stupid image in the top right hand corner (approx. 60 CSS headers worth of savings). And most of all, turn off the ads. (Well, not for me, I've taken care of that on a much lower level (aka /etc/hosts)).

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Re^8: Web forum markup language and the Monastery ([[...]])
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 19, 2005 at 14:24 UTC
    I do prefer: 
        <h1><font size = "3" color = "red">Heading</font></h1>

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    over 
        <p><span class = "big-red">Heading</span></p>

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    with a style sheet that says "big-red" should be displayed in a big red font.

    I do not think that many web authors who didn't use <h1>, but a <font> instead will if they go to CSS, suddenly will use logical markup. They'll just replace their font elements with span elements.

    If I'd get a penny for every CSS enabled webpage that was hard or impossible to read when CSS is turned off in the browser, I'd be rich.

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      I do not think that many web authors who didn't use <h1>, but a <font> instead will if they go to CSS, suddenly will use logical markup.

      CSS isn't aimed at such people. It's aimed at the people who realize that depracating the font tag was a good idea, but still need an alternative. Idiotic developers are going to stay idiotic, but only education can help them.

      If I'd get a penny for every CSS enabled webpage that was hard or impossible to read when CSS is turned off in the browser, I'd be rich.

      HTML is hard to read in notepad. What's your point? And why are you shutting off CSS in the browser? It's not a computationally-complete nightmare like JavaScript.

      "There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.

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        And why are you shutting off CSS in the browser?
        Because sometimes, you don't have a choice? Sometimes, all you have is an 80x24 dumb terminal. You may use a browser then that's CSS aware, but all it says is "Can't change the font. Can't use colors. Can't draw a border here. Can't change the font-size." Etc.

        And sometimes people have specific requirements. They need large, clear, fonts because otherwise, they can't see them. They need black on white, because with anything else, they just can't read it. Their only option is turn off (author supplied) style sheets. They need their own styles, either with a style sheet, or by browser configuration.

        That's why pages should be understandable with CSS turned off.

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