[thelist] Site Review; [was Apple helps web developers]

[Erika Meyer]

 > Apple have put together a site to help web developers.
...
 > Believe me, one does not present a Web development
 > site to this crowd without some trepidation.

I thought everyone at Evolt was pussy cats.  Except for maybe aardvark.

 > The site also supports principles
 > long-practiced by many on this list: thorough testing, adherence to
 > standards (when possible), and degradablilty. This is just the start, and I
 > know that Apple hopes this site will be helpful for the community.

good for Apple.

Re content: I think the subject matter is meaty enough (considering it has 
to also sell Apple products).  Love some of the sites you link to: Eric 
Meyer's (no relation) CSS chart & webstandards.org, for example.  And the 
browser archive?  (I didn't see it.)  I like those links very much.  High 
substance.

 > As for my role: I managed the content for the site. So, as it concerns this
 > list, I'm most interested in the your opinions about the articles. But if
 > you notice any design/layout/markup issues, I will make sure they get
 > addressed.

ooh.  A doctype.  ooh, no font tags!
The W3C validator DOES claim that they forgot to close a DIV (could be a 
very bad thing if true).  And there are no "alt" tags (empty or otherwise) 
on the many spacer gifs.

And as for design, I like the design; think it combines elegance with 
simplicity & fast download.  It's not as graphics heavy as the main Apple 
site (which I think suffers from too much sizzle and not enough 
substance... and is too much of a hassle for modem users).

OTOH, I personally find the fixed-ness of the layout a bit overly 
anal.  While I understand that Apple must please it's graphic design 
audience, I sort of wish they'd work on weaning their audience off 
pixel-perfect layouts.  (And, yeah, you shouldn't ignore Linux users either).

And I personally don't like the rollovers in the upper left hand corner too 
much.  Find them unnecessary and unhelpful...  It took me a long time to 
even find that little nav menu up there.  But the title text is good.

meow.

Erika