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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Linux Gazette extract (Issue 49)</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<HR>
<H1>
<CENTER>
Linux Gazette extract
</CENTER>
</H1>
<HR>
<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
<P> A few criteria we're keeping in mind:
<UL>
<LI> The Gazette is unique because of its distributed nature: it has
to be readable on a wide variety of mirrors and CD-ROMs whose hardware
and OSes we do not control.
<LI> Many of our readers pay by the minute for their online time, so
even adding a megabyte to the size of the Gazette (e.g., lots of
additional graphics) is a major expense for them.
<LI> Readers use a wide variety of browsers, including older versions.
Browsers include Netscape, IE, Opera, lynx, emacs, kfm, Mozilla, all
the experimental free browsers, etc, etc.
<LI> Thus, we want to stick really close to standard HTML as the
least common denominator. One day we will switch to style sheets, but
not in the near future, because we don't want to fight with the
browsers and how they mis-apply styles. (We have seen some spectacular
examples of unusable pages due to styles.) We are also resistant to
Javascript for the same reason.
<LI> We also stay away from depending on CGI, because it would
require special setup on the mirrors' part, and couldn't run at all on
CD-ROMs. We have allowed a few CGI scripts to sneak in (the search
engine, the mirror mail-in form), but these work only on the main site,
and we want to keep CGI scripts to a minimum. We have considered going
to an all-dynamic site (e.g., Zope-powered), but again that does not
seem feasable at present without destroying the <I>Gazette</I>'s
distribution infrastructure, which is what makes the <I>Gazette</I>
unique as well as so widely read, and which allows the <I>Gazette</I>
to be included in the <I>Linux Documentation Project</I> mirrors.
<LI> The Gazette is quite popular as it is, and we don't want to lose
that readership by making changes they might not like. Thus, we prefer
to make changes incrementally rather than all at once. One recent
change I did was to put the navigation bar both at the top and bottom
of the article, rather than just at the bottom. Besides that, most of
my work recently has been behind the scenes, making the Gazette easier
to generate, using, e.g., configuration files and Python scripts to
generate the article headers and the table of contents rather than
doing it all by editing HTML. Which makes building the Gazette more
fun and also minimizes dead links when typos appear.
</UL>
<P> Given this, if you have any particular suggestions, I'd be happy to
hear them. -Ed.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>
<HR>
<h5>
Writen by <CITE>Linux Gazette's editor</CITE> on Issue 49, January 2000<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">http://www.linuxgazette.com</A>
</h5>
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