This site tries to offer information so a nice layout is not only important
in helping to transmit this information better.
Therefore (and to support old browsers as much as possible) the new possibilities
of new versions of the browsers are only used when they:
Offer a certain extra value.
And they don't obstruct the usage of the pages by elder browsers too much.
After a while however people will have to update their browsers, in order not to obstruct progress in this area.
Let me know therefore when you have serious problems with certain aspects.
Design policy per issue
Tabulated tables
Although TAB characters caused a lot of problems with many elder browsers, they
had to be used to format the lists of chips in the numerical and
functional sections before tables were generally accepted by browsers.
An alternative would have been to use spaces to fill up the tabs.
This would probably have been better, although it would have cost
quite a lot of bandwidth.
Currently the tabulated tables need to be transformed to real HTML tables.
This just hasn't been done yet.
Large tables load very slowly however, because the browser waits until
the complete table has been loaded. This may require splitting the tables
up in subtables per page.
The abbreviations (and some other) tables have already been split up
this way.
HTML tables
Because the tab tables weren't perfect HTML tables have been
introduced quite quickly in this ChipDir, although they might have
caused troubles.
Back ground GIF's
This ChipDir has been using background GIF's so now and then because it
was considered quite harmless and for example my NetScape 1.1 browser
on a DEC Alpha had no problem with them.
I got some complaints however about them from 16-gray-scale Mac*
notebookers, so I removed them again the first time.
The second time I added them I got one complaint from a Sun'er,
who also had problems on other platforms. After I installed
NetScape 3.0Gold on the Alpha I also got readably problems and
removed it again and replaced it with a homogeneous light yellow
background color.
I think that background GIF's can be nice, but obviously some
systems just can't handle their palette's efficiently yet.
(Probably costs a lot of screen modification time and a second
shadow screen memory indeed, I think...)
Frames
I see no advantages in using frames yet.
Tables to make text columns
Although I know that text should be about 50 to 60 characters
wide to be best readable, it's against the HTML philosophy to
use tables to accomplish this so they aren't used in the ChipDir.
Javascript
Javascript offers a lot of advantages like search engines and
possibly also gathering demographics information, but the
situation isn't stable yet unfortunately, so care must be
taken. Some people (and me too) had problems loading the main
page on certain mirror sites. Therefore some of the earlier
code (that used a separate loadable Javascript file) has been
included in the page itself. When this also gives problems,
the search engine will be put back in it's own separate
HTML file again.
Clickable maps
Server side clickable maps (the only ones available in the beginning)
have been used for a while, but most mirror sites didn't implement
them (which wasn't serious) but once Europe got to many mirror sites
to fit into the world map there was enough cause to remove the map.
Perhaps a user side clickable map with world map and world sub
maps will be reintroduced later. (Any volunteer?)
Java
A lot of the browsers don't run Java yet (and I haven't learned
the language yet, so Java will not be used for some time to come).
Colors
A lot of the color information is being (or should be) ignored
by ignorant browsers, so a little use of colors to liven things
up a bit should be forgiven.
Tables to form colored blocks
See the experiment to form colored section headers on the
magazine page.
Just waiting for comments...
Cookies
The ChipDir itself isn't using cookies yet, but some of the advertisers
seem to do. Cookies are relatively innocent and can help in tracking
and aiding the visitor and avoiding that he has to type in his email
address and name over and over again, so they may be used later.
Cookies may also be helpfull in providing information about the users
demographics in order to improve the site or find suitable advertisers.
CGI-BIN
Running self written CGI-BIN script is not possible since I'm not allowed
to run them on my own providers site (unless I pay much more) and because
porting them to all 20 mirror sites is totally impossible.