Gandi Bar - Domain name - Comments

How the domain name industry works - part 1 - Mo

Mo — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:24:33 +0200

It was actually really hard to understand this without your help. Thank you.
Following one Wiki to another was futile.

How the domain name industry works - part 1 - baseonmars

baseonmars — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:10:47 +0200

nice! i've never managed to get my head around that... i'm saving that chart for later reference

Get your site at Gandi! - joe

joe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:10:34 +0100

Hi Anonymous (if that is your real name ;-),

I didn't mean to suggest that Flash was an upgrade to HTML in general, but more specifically that this was how it was handled with SiteMaker, e.g. for SiteMaker the Flash version is the full fat version, though the HTML alternative does have all the content present, just not presented with as much style.

SiteMaker started development 10 years ago when HTML wasn't capable of all the things Flash was, and browser compatibility wasn't what it is today. It is true that HTML has come a very long way since then and as you say can do all the things Flash can do, and sometimes more. In fact it is our objective to add more and more direct HTML features and improve further the HTML output so that ultimately the user could decide which version is their 'primary'. But this is still some way off.

The important part of my point was that regardless of which version is 'better' both are presented so that all content can be seen by all potential visitors, which I believe was the concern that El Bruno was raising.

Anyway, thanks for your input and we'll let you know as and when we produce new features. Take care,

Joe

Get your site at Gandi! - Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:34:06 +0100

@Joe: Your post hinges on one unfortunate assumption: that Flash provides an "upgrade" to HTML.

Furthermore, what the tool itself uses and what output it produces need not have any connection. An easy to use site creator tool could still produce sane HTML rather than Flash. You certainly don't need Flash for "rich media"; at most, the Flash should represent a fallback for modern browser technologies. For isntance, you could embed a video with the video tag and fall back to Flash for browsers that don't support that tag.

At this point, HTML can do absolutely everything Flash can, and often better.

Get your site at Gandi! - Joe

Joe — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:02:18 +0100

Hi El Bunto,

It's true that the editor is in Flash, as this allows unparalleled easy of use for the site builder, please have a go to see what I mean. But for the output, the site is generated in both Flash and HTML.

SiteMaker sites use progressive enhancement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progre...) to produce the viewable site, so we start with a W3C compliant clean XHTML version and then upgrade this to the full Flash version if we detect Flash and Javascript. The HTML version contains all the same content as the Flash version, and is designed to be clean and easy to view/navigate. It has no 'tables' in it ;-), and uses a standard format to it is easy to understand.

The full Flash version is the best way to view the site, as it contains all the 'rich' media, but the HTML alternative is there for those that cannot see this. If you use a screenreader with Flash turned off, it will read the HTML version correctly. So you are right you cannot add HTML directly, but anything you add to your site is then rendered in the HTML and marked up correctly. So for users who don't know how to write HTML this is a better solution.

Standards are an extremely important part of making the web accessible to everyone, which is why our tools outputs in this way. The reality is that web professionals can create wonderful standard compliant sites, though these can sometimes be out of reach for non-professional users, or those just learning.

The SiteMaker tool is certainly aimed at these non-professional users or those building for the first time on the web. So we make sure that the sites that are produced by it are standard compliant and gracefully upgrade (rather than downgrade) if the viewer has the appropriate technology.

But the key for these non-professional users is to make a tool that is easy to use and not as frightening as handcoding HTML.

You are quite right that there are many bad tools out there, but ours is not one of them.

Having said that, there is always room for improvement. We've been working on this product for 10 years and we've still got more to do. I hope you will appreciate our efforts.

Joe

Get your site at Gandi! - El Bunto

El Bunto — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:50:46 +0100

From the linked site:

``Our sites are based entirely on Macromedia's Flash technology''

and

``You can't upload HTML for use in your site.''

I am really surprised that Gandi are promoting such a tool that ignores all web standards. I expect better from an ethical and considerate company such as this.

Get your site at Gandi! - Zhang

Zhang — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:55:56 +0100

Wonderful....
I will try this new feature shortly....
Keep up the good work Gandi.....