Important Poll! (pretty) Please Vote!

[Rigel]

One technical issue to point out:

 

When I read most stories here (using Macintosh OS X, Safari), quotation marks and apostrophes disappear entirely. I've gotten used to interpolating them in my head, but they're not there on the screen. It may have to do with the fact that "curly" apostrophes and quotation marks map differently on Windows machines than on Macintoshes.

 

--Rigel

[glomph]

One technical issue to point out:

 

When I read most stories here (using Macintosh OS X, Safari), quotation marks and apostrophes disappear entirely. I've gotten used to interpolating them in my head, but they're not there on the screen. It may have to do with the fact that "curly" apostrophes and quotation marks map differently on Windows machines than on Macintoshes.

 

--Rigel

 

If people post something in plain text, then they should stick to regular ASCII characters. If stories are posted in HTML, then the software ought to make the conversion from some company's private scheme to standard HTML values, using ampersands and such if it is not standard ASCII. The software should do this tranparently, but given that the file passes through several hands between writing, editing, and posting, it may take some conscious intervention. I've not read much beyond Dom Luca's stories here, but I've not noticed the problem, and I always come here using Safari. Maybe your problem just comes up with some authors, so that the transfer process might be examinined in their case.

 

In this paragraph, I'm trying some stuff just for grins, so it may show as gibberish. As for “curly quotes” or even foreign tongues such as Εν αρχη ην ο λογος.

 

Apparently ampersand commands work in messages. and the Greek letters and curly quotes show up fine in Safari.

 

Anybody using later browsers on other platforms should see this fine, too, unless they've chosen as a default font something missing the appropriate Unicode characters.

[Drewbie]

One technical issue to point out:

 

When I read most stories here (using Macintosh OS X, Safari), quotation marks and apostrophes disappear entirely. I've gotten used to interpolating them in my head, but they're not there on the screen. It may have to do with the fact that "curly" apostrophes and quotation marks map differently on Windows machines than on Macintoshes.

 

--Rigel

You might want to try Firefox or Opera on your mac. I read stories on a G5 and they have qoutes on the page.

Edited July 16, 2006 by Drew

[Trebs]

I'm a bit of an odd-sort (no comments DK)... While I use the desktop computer with IE to typically read the forums and blogs, I like to read stories via my pocket PC. My pocket PC has wireless, and if, like last night, I'm going to be somewhere I can't access the internet for a while (cause I'm gonna be on a plane), then I do also cut/paste a story or two into pocket Word to read later.

 

As to type of internet connection, we're lucky that the area we're in has fiber. A local company, Surewest, has high-speed internet/cable/phones in our area via fiber - it's one of the reasons HP located a complex nearby in Roseville.

[Tim the Traveller]

I'm a lucky dial up user!

 

The site seems to work fine for me. I have no complaints at all--this site seems to be one of the faster ones to load for me, And I just have to say thank you for not cluttering the site with all kinds of extensive graphics that take forever to load on a slow connection.

 

 

 

 

 

[NickolasJames8]

I didn't even think dial up was invented anymore

[abc]

One technical issue to point out:

 

When I read most stories here (using Macintosh OS X, Safari), quotation marks and apostrophes disappear entirely. I've gotten used to interpolating them in my head, but they're not there on the screen. It may have to do with the fact that "curly" apostrophes and quotation marks map differently on Windows machines than on Macintoshes.

 

--Rigel

Try setting character encoding to "western" (iso-8859-1) while viewing such story. There are some sites here that do not "introduce" themselves properly and if you've set your browser's default to other encoding you could experience some difficulties.

[Guest djd]

One technical issue to point out:

 

When I read most stories here (using Macintosh OS X, Safari), quotation marks and apostrophes disappear entirely. I've gotten used to interpolating them in my head, but they're not there on the screen. It may have to do with the fact that "curly" apostrophes and quotation marks map differently on Windows machines than on Macintoshes.

 

--Rigel

 

Quotation marks and apostrophes are used in HTML as attribute delimiters. In order to not confuse the browser, regular quotation marks and apostrophes should not be used in a web page's text--although they often are. Rather, the author should use "character entities," which tell the browser to insert the appropriate symbol when it renders the page. Some HTML editing software handle this substitution better than others, just as some browsers handle the non-standards use of regular quotation marks better than others. (Internet Explorer in any version, including the latest, doesn't seem to handle anything well.)

 

Each hosted author's site at Gay Authors is designed, created and maintained by (mostly) volunteers with varying design philosophies, skill and knowledge levels, so one site might behave differently than another. Of course, as the webadmin for underthehoodster, I think what I'm doing is absolutely correct and everyone else is getting it wrong.

 

Lastly, THANK YOU JAMESSAVIK for doing this poll. Getting an insight into how people access Gay Authors is very helpful. Now I can worry less about load times.

 

Dennis

[ryan_brandt]

WHY wasn't there a Mac option???

[JamesSavik]

WHY wasn't there a Mac option???

 

My apologies again to the Mac legions Ryan. I should have thought of a "Mac" option when I set up the poll. I thought I was being progressive when I included Linux.