LWN Update

Posted Nov 27, 2002 18:26 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> Use a browser, such as Mozilla, that allows you to override site style-sheets.

I do, Konqueror, for normal browsing (incl. @ LWN). Unfortunately, that doesn't work
to well, because there are to many sites that for instance set the text/fg color w/o
setting background color (as is the problem here <g>), and I prefer to let the site
override, as in some cases, it adds to the presentation.

This is actually a problem big enough to be specifically mentioned in RichInStyle.com 's
CSS tutorial (before the reading of which, I thought I was the only one to find this
extremely annoying <g>), and I've repeatedly noticed it, even on widely read and
professionally designed commercial sites. Site/page designers will set one attribute,
often foreground, without setting the complimentary attribute. I use an off-dark-green
mid-brightness default background color, browser default, not because I like it all that
well, but because it doesn't glare at me like white does, but both black and white
stand out well on it, as do various other commonly used foreground/text color choices
(nobody chooses this color for foreground, because it's not exactly pretty, but at least
I can SEE the text, in most cases <g>).

One alternative I used to use on MSWormOS was a personal filtering/rewriting proxy
(The Proxomitron), with user creatable/changable filters. Unfortunately, I haven't
found a similar utility for Linux that works for me, and that I am comfortable with. (I'm
currently learning Perl, my first venture beyond shell scripting in Linux, which I only
upgraded to from MSWormOS a year ago, to see what I can do with FilterProxy. The
maintainer could use (and has asked for) help, as last time I checked, the available
newest version used an outdated Perl module and wouldn't function correctly with the
newer version of that module. Working with him on that is likely to be my first
volunteer development project in Linux. I was a hobbiest programmer using Visual
Basic in MSWormOS, and one of the reasons I switched was in ordered to be able to
continue my development under the software libre environment I have become far
more comfortable with. There's a similar project using Java, and others.)