Web Fundamentals: A handbook for best practices

That's not very helpful on a touch device

The medicine I am giving you may taste bitter, but a result should be some much better technical writing. So far, 'multi-screen' is just jargon of an in-group, really 'in' because it wasn't clear to me, and my background in computing is plenty deep.

You still just don't 'get it': E.g., that 'mobile', smartphones, wrist watches, glasses, or tablets are the main issue just was not at all clear to an 'outsider.

"Multi-screen', no matter how common and comfortable you and your colleagues are with the term, just is not, Not, NOT clear. Here is an example: Do you mean a workstation with four screens? Is that what you are talking about, that is, software from one Web site that makes separate use of each of the four screens? How the heck to know?

Or maybe you meant essentially multiple windows, treated separately, from one Web site on one physical screen? How the heck to know?

Or, essentially every Web site now is 'multi-screen' in that it works if the resolution on a screen is 640 x 480, ..., 3000 x 4096 and lots of other screen resolutions and physical screen sizes. Also each Web site is 'multi-screen' in the sense that 500 people, each in a different location, can be viewing Web pages from the site all at the same time, that is, the site is serving 500 screens.

Instead, apparently by 'multi-screen' you mean the different screens 'types' on end user devices from workstations, desktops, laptops, and tablets down to smart phones and maybe wrist watches and glasses. But if each of these devices has a standard Web browser, then what is the significant difference? Maybe the difference is swipes versus clicks or some such, in which case 'screen' is not really the point.

The issue is being clear when using words with meanings that are not in a standard dictionary. Such a word is a 'term' and, thus, needs at least a definition and likely also motivation, explanation, and examples. Else are on the way to jargon and gibberish.

Such bad writing is endemic in practical computing and a big, huge, problem for the field. Even computer science very much needs to 'up its game' to catch up with physics and especially mathematics.

Apparently my little lesson in good technical writing 101 rubbed some feathers the wrong way, but the lesson stands -- good definitions are crucial, and 'multi-screen' screams out for a good definition.

It still is not clear, without a lot of guessing, just what is the significance of any definition of 'multi-screen' for building a Web site. That is, the Web site mostly shouldn't care. E.g., I'm building a Web site, and the pages look fine, and there is no logic at all in either the server or what is sent to the client on what the heck the screen size is. My solution: Each Web page is exactly 800 pixels wide. Period. If the actual window used on the client device is less than 800 pixels wide, then the client device is welcome to add horizontal scroll bars. For JavaScript, I have tried hard not to write any and so far have been successful although some of Microsoft's software writes some JavaScript for me. So, in particular, for my Web site, I still can't find a meaning of 'multi-screen' that is useful.

I'm talking about good definitions and clear communications.

Calm down and read it, actually read it, see the problem, which is HUGE, and begin to see the importance of the problem and the need for a good solution which is just a short lesson in Technical Writing 101.

My first post was short, but apparently was too short for everyone to 'get it'.

Apparently some people actually like in-group jargon and gibberish.

Frankly, on so many levels, this site is just fucking terrible. It would not be particularly hyperbolic to suggest that it actually summarizes much of what is wrong with the internet today. Let's see:

(1) 'Web'. There is more to the internet than web. When writing content for aspiring developers, can we not accept broader and more accurate terms in their education?

(2) After clicking through to a page entitled Web Fundamentals: A handbook for best practices, and then Get Started (WTF? I thought this was a reference, not a process!) I get 'Your First Multi-Screen Site'. What? I was presented with "handbook for best practices", and I got "hand-holding simplified idiot guide aiming for feel good first outcomes". How could anyone think this is semantically justified?

(3) The produced page screenshots are near-on unreadable with shitty contrast and few realistic elements (forms, small social or content-suggestive icons, etc.)

(4) The text under 'What will I learn' is so small as to be unreadable on a 17" laptop (~latest Firefox, Linux).

(5) The fundamental structure of the 'course' (not a handbook anymore, eh?) makes little sense given the tiny number of lessons (ie. 2). An alternate overall approach to content organization would be been more intuitive.

(6) There are Chinese characters all over the site, because someone's nappyJS framework figured nobody would ever interpret them has having any meaning. Well, here's a wakeup call from China. There's more of us than there are of you. (and I say that as a westerner who learned Chinese ... I believe tptacek and others here also have strong Chinese reading skills).

(7) Separation of concerns fail: create a skeleton view of the page with content but without styling. Design is secondary to content. Figure out what you communicate before dreaming up methods to achieve it.

(8) Use of terms without introduction, eg. IA, padding. Does wonders for intelligibility! Any editor from the old-school print and paper world would have caught this in a flash, if the author got off their high horse, recognized the lack of novelty in fundamental communications processes, and accepted some criticism while espousing "the fundamental way to be just like them" (for idiots edition; paraphrased from original page title and ridiculous semanting hoop-jump that led to this cesspit).

(9) Contrast of prescriptive "As a web developer, you are expected to..." stuff and hand-holding present continuous pronouns ("We will...") comes across as condescending and pathetic. While this may be normal amongst certain segments of US communications, the rest of the world just laughs along ... at you, not with you.

(10) Use of terribly US-centric and verbose expressions such as 'judgement call'. Heard of "making a decision"? Well, it's a huge improvement: for the majority of its global users, English is a second language. (Hey, look at that! A useful fundamental!) And guess what? It's even more concise when you use the word "decide", which has the secondary benefit of using even simpler grammar! (As in "Decide how to integrate Dogecoins", or "Decide when to write authoritatively")

(11) Ridiculous gaps in lists due to poor styling that cannot degrade if Javascript has been disabled or is not present, eg. in partially loaded pages, accessibility-oriented consumers, text-only browsers, security-conscious browsers.

(12) Despite claims to be part of a larger, mobile-focused course (Hey, I thought this was an authoritative best-practices handbook? Oh wait...), nowhere is there mention of the reality of mobile: the network is slow, the network is unrealiable. Cache-control? Forget it. Emerging standards for offline, open web applications? Forget it.

(13) Why the hell would you use a link to a second page to "show full sample" when on mobile? You'd clearly want to load that as part of the main page (Oh wait, you did! Why not load it again?), as round-trip times for page loads are terrible. (Oh wait, it seems the author has never written an actual mobile website outside of shiny blingphone-optimized first-world 5G always-on-wifi environments. Like, Chai latte with skim, baby. Is that cocoa organic? Oh, you don't know? No thanks. Where was I?)

(14) Use of flash? 2014? What? Use of flash? What?

(15) Calling software features 'technologies' is about as transparent as how much I would like to physically accelerate an extremity of my body towards the upper frontal portion of the author, particularly when people from outside of your ... cough ... culture try to comprehend it. (Easy rule: technology's physical, software's not)

(16) Inconsistent capitalization.

(17) Use of video on mobile-targeted sites without discussion of pitfalls? Really?

Not sure about others here, but frankly I'm sick of Google trying to be the be-all and end-all of the internet (+1!), and polluting it with touchy-feely-device content ("CONSUME! CONSUME!") like this holier-than-thou idiotville garbage that tries to gloss over the ugly-as-butt reality of web content authorship and network connectivity problems. Just... fail.

I thought this was an excellent tutorial on css vs positioning: http://learnlayout.com/