Hi,
In most things I strongly agree with "Webmaster33".
I think there is a book and website GT should invest in and have a look at, which give answers and some very good tips towards more or less all the questions asked:
http://www.webstyleguide.com (Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition)
It will be a very good idea to have a read through it and keep many of things in that book / website in mind.
GT products templates i.e. xhtml and css should also try to comply to W3C (http://www.w3.org/)
The Questions:
1.
Using CSS and XHTML is a very good idea, since that would simply be to keep up to speed with developments on the rest of the net. No HTML or CSS should be left within the coding since it really messes up any customized looks. Going fully with CSS definitely is the right way to take.
Again as Webmaster33 says:
"GT should only use CSS as long the NS4+ and IE4+ compatibility is maintained!!! It should be kept backward compatible, and readable with 4.x browsers."
Compatibility and backward compatibility is extremely important!! Its important to remember that its the usability of a site that matters not how flashy it looks.
2.
Same again. Extremely important to maintain NS4+ and IE4+ compatibility. A user who cant view your site due to old browser or features not working due to some incompatibility, is a customer lost!
To many designers try to make their site look really cool and fancy, they might please themselves but end up creating websites that are useless and not very good for the people who matters, your customers / visitors.
3.
I would prefer to have no java scripts, or at least only for features that are of no importance. It comes back to Question 2 and compatibility. You really don't want to have something that might make the site look different, not work or make things problematic for any of your visitors.
4.
PDF format is good, but a HTML version should also be available.
5.
Installations seems to be fine, however sometimes it does feel a bit risky. To create backups of existing installations and maintain them should be made easier. Currently there are many different ways it seems to make backups, all of them not very straight forward and to be honest none of them seem to work very well.
I would feel much more confident doing installs and upgrades if I knew that any previous installation was backed up and easy to go back to.
6.
More examples and explanations of how different fields or columns can be used or what they are.
7.
As mentioned before. There is a constant feeling of a unstable product, this I think is mainly due to that for example in LinksSQL there is no 1 simple way of creating a full backup or part backup which then easily can be restored. Or a easy way to retrieve information from a backup file to a fresh installation. The times when something has gone wrong and I have tried do a fresh install.. only to find that whenever I use any backup file, it would tell me that some fields or data is missing.. I then find myself spending a long time trying to create the "correct" environment so that I can use a certain backup file.
There needs to be put in place a easy way to create a backup which will work on any installation, fresh or old. Something that works well and you can rely on. If I was confident that a backup existed which I easily could use then installing, maintain or simply playing around with a install wouldn't be so "scary".
Other features, I agree with some of the other guys have mentioned:
- Support LSQL to hide categories
- Support LSQL to set to exclude categories from link-submitting
- Less templates
- WAP Support (There will a lot of business (and money to make) in the next few years on the WAP / Mobile market.)
- More advanced Editors functions so that they can take over more work from the administrator, i.e. in validating etc. Maybe different levels of Admin access?!
- Easier to share or the possibility to share databases, i.e. 2 different sites (each with its own domain, licence and databases) being able to access and use each others databases. For example to be able to do searches on 2 different domains and database from one site. Basically easier to share and access information.
In most things I strongly agree with "Webmaster33".
I think there is a book and website GT should invest in and have a look at, which give answers and some very good tips towards more or less all the questions asked:
http://www.webstyleguide.com (Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition)
It will be a very good idea to have a read through it and keep many of things in that book / website in mind.
GT products templates i.e. xhtml and css should also try to comply to W3C (http://www.w3.org/)
The Questions:
1.
Using CSS and XHTML is a very good idea, since that would simply be to keep up to speed with developments on the rest of the net. No HTML or CSS should be left within the coding since it really messes up any customized looks. Going fully with CSS definitely is the right way to take.
Again as Webmaster33 says:
"GT should only use CSS as long the NS4+ and IE4+ compatibility is maintained!!! It should be kept backward compatible, and readable with 4.x browsers."
Compatibility and backward compatibility is extremely important!! Its important to remember that its the usability of a site that matters not how flashy it looks.
2.
Same again. Extremely important to maintain NS4+ and IE4+ compatibility. A user who cant view your site due to old browser or features not working due to some incompatibility, is a customer lost!
To many designers try to make their site look really cool and fancy, they might please themselves but end up creating websites that are useless and not very good for the people who matters, your customers / visitors.
3.
I would prefer to have no java scripts, or at least only for features that are of no importance. It comes back to Question 2 and compatibility. You really don't want to have something that might make the site look different, not work or make things problematic for any of your visitors.
4.
PDF format is good, but a HTML version should also be available.
5.
Installations seems to be fine, however sometimes it does feel a bit risky. To create backups of existing installations and maintain them should be made easier. Currently there are many different ways it seems to make backups, all of them not very straight forward and to be honest none of them seem to work very well.
I would feel much more confident doing installs and upgrades if I knew that any previous installation was backed up and easy to go back to.
6.
More examples and explanations of how different fields or columns can be used or what they are.
7.
As mentioned before. There is a constant feeling of a unstable product, this I think is mainly due to that for example in LinksSQL there is no 1 simple way of creating a full backup or part backup which then easily can be restored. Or a easy way to retrieve information from a backup file to a fresh installation. The times when something has gone wrong and I have tried do a fresh install.. only to find that whenever I use any backup file, it would tell me that some fields or data is missing.. I then find myself spending a long time trying to create the "correct" environment so that I can use a certain backup file.
There needs to be put in place a easy way to create a backup which will work on any installation, fresh or old. Something that works well and you can rely on. If I was confident that a backup existed which I easily could use then installing, maintain or simply playing around with a install wouldn't be so "scary".
Other features, I agree with some of the other guys have mentioned:
- Support LSQL to hide categories
- Support LSQL to set to exclude categories from link-submitting
- Less templates
- WAP Support (There will a lot of business (and money to make) in the next few years on the WAP / Mobile market.)
- More advanced Editors functions so that they can take over more work from the administrator, i.e. in validating etc. Maybe different levels of Admin access?!
- Easier to share or the possibility to share databases, i.e. 2 different sites (each with its own domain, licence and databases) being able to access and use each others databases. For example to be able to do searches on 2 different domains and database from one site. Basically easier to share and access information.