SPF Pure HTML & CSS Comp questions and discussions

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61
Off Topic:

Can we please move to mistrial and get another judge that isn’t also a mod? :slight_smile:

This way we’d be safe from power abuse… probably.

Well, I’m also done for tonight. Tomorrow is another day. And I didn’t keep my promise to highlight some of the CSS. But I will. Tomorrow.

There are some CSS things, Pure CSS, in the comp, that stand out, aside from CSS fish. And more serious than :before or :after attempts at selling better. :wink:

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Can you please explain what you mean by this comment noonnope. Are you saying that the judging panel in someway abused their position in order to influence the outcome of the competition?

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No spikeZ. :slight_smile:

Don’t go putting the heat on me again. Please don’t twist this too.

I said “another judge”, singular.
I’m saying filling two positions at once may be too stressful. It shows in some of your posts in this thread.

Maybe you need to step back a little from moding this thread since you’ve personally been involved in the comp as a judge, and you may think some posts here are targeting you personally as a judge. :slight_smile:

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fair enough, break required :slight_smile:

Night y’all

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Allow me to explain my position on this… and I’m glad you quoted the title… especially the “Pure” part.

While I agree that graphics with CSS are not against the letter of the law, I also don’t think they meet the spirit of the challenge given… thus I believe they were a loophole.

Why? Because @font-face graphics are not a feasible or standards-compliant real-world implementation of vector graphic illustration. W3C has a spec for vector graphics in markup - it’s called SVG. @font-face was designed for a different purpose. Using @font-face to circumvent the ability to use SVG or raster imagery is the definition of a hack and a loophole, and is a circumlocutious manner of achieving graphics in a website that wouldn’t make sense to ever use in the real world.

Hacks by definition, are not “Pure”.

The point of the contest, as I understood it, was to show off possible real-world uses of CSS3, e.g. to replace graphics and javascript as they pertain to layout. Examples: beautiful type-setting with non-web fonts, block-level graphics, gradients, border radii, and CSS3 animations to create non-JS DHTML effects.

For that reason, I don’t think the @font-face image tactic should have been rewarded extra points. This is my opinion. Take it for what it’s worth. Cheers.

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FWIW, I actually thought the rules were reasonably clear…

  • No SVG, No images or any other external files…
    Images I take as being .gif, .jpg, .png, or any other bitmap data.
    I don’t see that this ruled out HTML/CSS wizardry to create something image-like.

  • Copy is supplied, …, however no additions or omissions are allowed.
    I take the “copy” as the words and grammer making up the readable content. In my mind this did not discount adding additional markup and CSS content: providing the actual copy (readable content) remained unchanged. If a human read aloud the resulting copy then it should remain the same. That’s how I interpreted it anyway.

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I agree 100%

But do you not agree that using HTML/CSS wizardry to create something image-like is a hack of the W3C spec?

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Nobody said the rules weren’t clear. I said I saw cracks in them being applied in judging. And judge/staff bad manners attempts to cover that.

By saying the rules are interpreted differently. Which is the same to say “the rules as we like”.

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I’m from a maths background, and I noticed no misunderstanding in the usage of that, it would have been even more correct to say “HTML is not equal to XHTML” instead of “HTML =/= XHTML”.

Also in my opinion it does not really matter what the w3c validator says, what matters is how end browsers interpret your work, the validator is a good guideline and nothing more.
and yes, I have served XHTML to IE when I was experimenting with cross browsers SVG vertical text, which was before css3 existed.

and yes, I noticed you gave credit to proper code wrapping, I willingly avoid doing it for simplicities sake, mainly because I have and see not a single visitor who would benefit from that extra code.

You inform them in a polite manner, why? because making things personal turns the discussion into a fight, everyone here things they are good, reasonable people, stating the opposite will not make them think otherwise, even if you try.

Also I think what they meant by “pure css” was, “only css”, this definition is common on the internet, while the spirit of the competition differs for everyone, initially I thought it was going to be a pure CSS trickery competition, where the spirit was something like Paul’s entry, it took me some time to change my mind on it.

@w3dx
yeah, thats exactly how I read it too, obviously I required 5 re-reads, but that was the end impression I got.

depends on what is meant by a hack, mediocre? workaround? cut-up?
Yes, it is a hack in terms of working around the images restriction, but there was no images restriction, only a “everything except css” restriction, so it can be interpreted as both a hack and not a hack.
Now what did surprise me is that there were no font based imagery which could have been done, and would still be allowed if it was done only with css.

yes, rules as they like, they are the ones who made the contest, and it’s their rules, you on the other hand did not make the rules, and as such were required to interpret them their way, which I agree, might have been a bit difficult, but you gotta give them some slack, after all it was the first of it’s kind, and there were bound to be quirks.

I did think you meant that they weren’t clear enough, and that the judging had cracks, and I believe you.

The only time I see judging without cracks is when some mathematical problem is solved, because you can’t argue with maths.
When anything artistic gets involved, then opinions deviate, and there are always cracks, even the examination boards at universities have massive cracks, you should have expected this noonnope.

Off Topic:

lol I sound like Mr Hindsight

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We have to disagree on this. If you write XHTML, then it is XHTML. If you write HTML, but pose as a XHTML coder by using the self closing tag, than it is HTML. And if you use a self closing tag like this one “<br />” and believe it’s XHTML, you’re wrong! :wink:

What browser do with it is less relevant.

It’s like math. 2+2 = 4. It doesn’t matter if it’s the candy for the children or the jail years an offender gets. It doesn’t matter what way it’s used.

While I agree the validator has flaws, it’s not the way you serve you’re mark up. It’s not the way UAs get the mark up and what they do with it. It’s about the rules and knowledge you have when you write that mark up. And if you know and follow XHTML rules, then it’s XHTML.

For me, coding is like math. I didn’t make comments about the flaws in design, I made comments about flaws in code, looking at the rules. The coding parts and techniques were questioned, looking at the rules, not the colors or rainbows used.

Off Topic:

This is anecdotical. :slight_smile: But let’s talk hypothetic.

What if you inform them in a polite manner and they pretend it’s OK. What then?

What if they have the power and they are under orders to say anything to make you shut your mouth and ask no further questions?

Just hypothetic.

A judge in the comp, with a mod power, is using aggressive language and intimidating tactics to discourage people make observations. What this tells you? That the comp is transparent?

So what if they organized the whole show. Bravo to them! But if they can’t take ANY kind of feedback after, it’s only a lie. It’s a pretend.

spikeZ’s behavior, attitude and language would’ve cost another user a ban probably. To justify this bad manners, they say I “dragged out that thread with pedantic nit-picking and it brought down the tone of the contest”. Is there really “no issues with” spikeZ posts lately?

Well, at least, was it worth it? The tone of the contest was the essential part? :slight_smile:

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We have to disagree on this. If you write XHTML, then it is XHTML. If you write HTML, but pose as a XHTML coder by using the self closing tag, than it is HTML. And if you use a self closing tag like this one “<br />” and believe it’s XHTML, you’re wrong!

I never said that, I’m saying the same as you, having a closing tag does not make it XHTML at all, for once we are in total agreement, you could write in normal HTML and serve it like xhtml, which would make it garbled xhtml, while if you know and follow the rules of XHTML but serve it as html, it would make it garbled html, and support for xhtml is low.

Now if it was a pure coding competition, then the order of entries would be completely different, and I would agree with you, but it wasn’t.

But I still think what browser you use to view what makes a big difference, to make an example, just look at the screen readers, which are also browsers…

Off Topic:

This is anecdotical. But let’s talk hypothetic.

I know, my conversations tend to make some rare people angry while most people enjoy them because most of what I saw can be made into an anecdote.

What if you inform them in a polite manner and they pretend it’s OK. What then?

Then your screwed, the persons mind is closed to criticism, and there is no way to inform them directly, doing so with result in the person getting angry at you and nothing more, he will still not see the error in his way’s.
Because by default, everyone has an ego.

What if they have the power and they are under orders to say anything to make you shut your mouth and ask no further questions?

So what if they have power? it’s called admin abuse, and when that happens you have 2 options, take it or leave, there is no third option where you can talk them into stopping, even though I wish there was, plus what we see here is very very very mild abuse which stems from the massive amount of undesirable content that is posted daily.

While if they are under orders (and I doubt this is true), then you definitely have no way to change the person as the actions are not even his own.

Just hypothetic.

don’t lie :slight_smile:

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No it wouldn’t bring about a ban. It would probably not even bring a response unless reported by other members and even then the person who posted it would maybe get a PM or at worst a warning.

This is why we still have a diverse range of members, all of whom go to making a great community. Some give help, some get help, some are acerbic and some hand hold beginners all the way to a resolution.

It takes all sorts of characters as is proven on a regular basis.

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Only you and Steve seem(ed) to have a major problem noonope. Things were settled with Steve last night and I thought with you too but obviously I was wrong as you appear to be dragging this all out again for another day.

Seeing as I have no idea where you are going with this one I am going to give you a wide berth and let others deal with it from now on.

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Off Topic:

But if they can’t take ANY kind of feedback after, it’s only a lie. It’s a pretend.

Feedback is king, all hail feedback.
(I’m serious)

A. Have issues with mod’s comments? wasn’t there some kind of thread or post or admin that took care of this?

B. Want the competition to take criticism? post solutions without bashing anyone.

C. Not happy with the spirit of the competition? maybe it was a different kind of spirit?

D. Want your own competition? Suggest it to the mods, provide facts on it’s validity and success and make sure you refine the rules! this way everyone will have fun.

E. Tone is important? as it seems (not 100% sure here), yes, very.

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Yes, it could be perceived as a “hack”. But hacks can still be “Pure HTML/CSS”.

Yes, agree.

Just wondering what you mean by “proper code wrapping”? (Sorry, I may have missed it if mentioned earlier.)

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Oh, its the the

/*<![CDATA[*/

 /*]]>*/

Wrapping for the css that was seen in scout1idf’s entry

its the ultra proper way to add embedded css, that will comment it out for any browser that does not support CSS, while I pointed out on how much background compatibility is actually feasible depends purely on your target audience.

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Hmmm… Really?! :lol:

But seriously, math is a relative science. You start with suppositions based on observations made in a given reference system. Once you change this subjective reference system, all math theory goes to drain.

The numbers theory is proof of that. In school you learn the that the natural numbers set is {0,1, …, ∞}. You use it as an axiom. You don’t question that.

When you go to faculty, you learn that there is a whole complex theory proving how you start with 0, use a unit to get 1, and how the unit adding provides a way to create this natural number set. It’s not taken for granted anymore. It’s proven. But still, only using a given reference system.

Isn’t this something! :wink:
What do you know, math has cracks too! :rofl:

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[OT]I disagree completely, and your wording has cracks, “math is based on observations made in a given reference system”, once you change the reference system, you get more math, it never goes to drain, how could you even suggest that!
your not a mathematically minded person after all!

you change the rules, and you get different but correct results
[/OT]

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You shouldn’t disagree completely. :slight_smile:

Math exists because is invented. Based on a given reference system, observations made on that particular reference system, and extrapolations made starting from those observations.

Math is fragile and relative. The/Some rules applied in math are strict, yes. But the whole system is unstable. If you can understand that, you know more, you don’t know less.

You’re saying math is unique like a database. I agree. But I say math is far from being the data warehouse it should be to cover all the reference systems possible. Reaching that potential would change math, to the point of not being math anymore, much like a data warehouse is not a database.

Once you change the reference system, the math is not math anymore, is something else completely.

I believe though that what you mean is that when you change something smaller, parameters, variables, then you get more math.

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Off Topic:

Whether I’m using A’s or B’s or X’s or 1’s or base 10 or base X or any other underlying system, it’s still maths.