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	<title>Comments on: What does a &#8220;free script&#8221; need to provide?</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/</link>
	<description>Tips and Commentary on Web Accessibility, Usability, and Search Marketing best practices.</description>
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		<title>By: Joe Dolson</title>
		<link>http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/comment-page-1/#comment-23889</link>
		<dc:creator>Joe Dolson</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:05:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/#comment-23889</guid>
		<description>I can certainly agree with that, Mike --- to me, that&#039;s just part of the programming. It seems to me that the normative condition of a script you download is to be crap code...

I prefer to offer minimal styling hooks --- enough to be able to target pretty much any element, but I don&#039;t like to clutter the code with a lot of them. In this case, the HTML produced is so simple that it was hardly relevant!

I&#039;ve gone both ways with the initial styling. I&#039;ve provided it in some cases, but usually not. Still, it certainly can be valuable to provide guidance at least in respect to what hooks are available.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I can certainly agree with that, Mike&thinsp;&#8212;&thinsp;- to me, that&#8217;s just part of the programming. It seems to me that the normative condition of a script you download is to be crap&nbsp;code&#8230;</p>
<p>I prefer to offer minimal styling hooks&thinsp;&#8212;&thinsp;- enough to be able to target pretty much any element, but I don&#8217;t like to clutter the code with a lot of them. In this case, the <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> produced is so simple that it was hardly&nbsp;relevant!</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve gone both ways with the initial styling. I&#8217;ve provided it in some cases, but usually not. Still, it certainly can be valuable to provide guidance at least in respect to what hooks are&nbsp;available.</p>
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		<title>By: Mike Cherim</title>
		<link>http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/comment-page-1/#comment-23888</link>
		<dc:creator>Mike Cherim</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:49:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/#comment-23888</guid>
		<description>I &lt;em&gt;fully expect&lt;/em&gt; validity and proper element usage! I am mostly disappointed and I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=168&quot;&gt;bitched about this before&lt;/a&gt;. People who distribute scripts and whatnot have a responsibility to the internet and their code&#039;s users. I just got my hands on some script for a domain (&lt;abbr title=&quot;Top-Level Domain&quot;&gt;TLD&lt;/abbr&gt;) lookup tool) and my goodness, what a piece of crap it was. I had to rewrite the entire thing because even the PHP sucked royally. One bad script affects 100s if not 1000s of sites.

What I do do, and not sure if you do, is I also include plenty of styling hooks and I offer a stylesheet showing all the elements, classes, and IDs used as well as some basic styling so it&#039;ll look decent on most sites right out of the box. I figure that will be really helpful to the end-user, even if my choice of colors doesn&#039;t match, because the file exists, it (and mentioned in a readme) indicates to the user that they may have to tweak the styles. It keeps them from belly-aching.

Too bad the guy didn&#039;t offer a reply email, you could have pointed out the need to style to him.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I <em>fully expect</em> validity and proper element usage! I am mostly disappointed and I have <a href="http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=168">bitched about this before</a>. People who distribute scripts and whatnot have a responsibility to the internet and their code&#8217;s users. I just got my hands on some script for a domain (<abbr title="Top-Level Domain">TLD</abbr>) lookup tool) and my goodness, what a piece of crap it was. I had to rewrite the entire thing because even the <abbr title="Hypertext PreProcessing">PHP</abbr> sucked royally. One bad script affects 100s if not 1000s of&nbsp;sites.</p>
<p>What I do do, and not sure if you do, is I also include plenty of styling hooks and I offer a stylesheet showing all the elements, classes, and IDs used as well as some basic styling so it&#8217;ll look decent on most sites right out of the box. I figure that will be really helpful to the end-user, even if my choice of colors doesn&#8217;t match, because the file exists, it (and mentioned in a readme) indicates to the user that they may have to tweak the styles. It keeps them from&nbsp;belly-aching.</p>
<p>Too bad the guy didn&#8217;t offer a reply email, you could have pointed out the need to style to&nbsp;him.</p>
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		<title>By: Jermayn Parker</title>
		<link>http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/comment-page-1/#comment-23887</link>
		<dc:creator>Jermayn Parker</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:35:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/#comment-23887</guid>
		<description>Yeah basic script is the way to go, obviously he was just super lazy!

In regards to your question I think some basic help is a good idea. I would rather use script from someone who I know who will give me solid help than someone who does not.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yeah basic script is the way to go, obviously he was just super&nbsp;lazy!</p>
<p>In regards to your question I think some basic help is a good idea. I would rather use script from someone who I know who will give me solid help than someone who does&nbsp;not.</p>
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		<title>By: Joe Dolson</title>
		<link>http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/comment-page-1/#comment-23885</link>
		<dc:creator>Joe Dolson</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:46:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/#comment-23885</guid>
		<description>Good to know. Glad I&#039;m not alone on that!</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Good to know. Glad I&#8217;m not alone on&nbsp;that!</p>
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		<title>By: Sarah Bourne</title>
		<link>http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/comment-page-1/#comment-23882</link>
		<dc:creator>Sarah Bourne</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:23:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/03/what-does-a-free-script-need-to-provide/#comment-23882</guid>
		<description>I&#039;m with you, Joe: I would prefer to do my own styling so I can be sure it fits in with my other stuff.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m with you, Joe: I would prefer to do my own styling so I can be sure it fits in with my other&nbsp;stuff.</p>
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