This forum HTML needs some work.

Talk about stuff specific to the site -- bugs, suggestions, and of course praise welcome.
Locked

What should we do with the bad HTML code?

Poll ended at November 7th, 2002, 4:57 pm

Re-write portions of the forum
7
30%
Start a witch hunt
7
30%
Burn down the offices of the phpBB Group
6
26%
Bah, have a coffee and forget about it
3
13%
Launch a law pursuit against W3C
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 23

User avatar
Orbite
Posts: 3757
Joined: November 4th, 2002, 8:23 pm
Contact:

This forum HTML needs some work.

Post by Orbite »

:mrgreen: It's hard to preach the virtues of web standard compliant softwares when this forum is not valid HTML.

:arrow:W3C validation of this page
pepp5
Posts: 191
Joined: November 4th, 2002, 10:01 pm
Location: Redmond, WA, USA
Contact:

Looks good to me.

Post by pepp5 »

From the validator page:

<< No errors found!

Valid HTML 4.01! Congratulations, this document validates as HTML 4.01 Transitional! >>

- pepp
User avatar
Orbite
Posts: 3757
Joined: November 4th, 2002, 8:23 pm
Contact:

Post by Orbite »

Yeah!

The code seems correct fine now.
Good job at making fast corrections. 8)
User avatar
johann_p
Posts: 8479
Joined: November 5th, 2002, 3:05 am
Location: Sheffield, UK

Somebody should fix the quote and delete buttons ...

Post by johann_p »

they are too far too the right. Other than that I dont really care if the forum is fully W3C
valid as long as it does what it should do and does not exploit browser-specific feature,
that would lock certain browsers out.
We shouldn't get too religious about these rules.
bertilow
Posts: 4
Joined: November 5th, 2002, 4:17 am
Contact:

Still not correct HTML

Post by bertilow »

<blockquote>The code seems correct fine now.
Good job at making fast corrections. icon_cool.gif</blockquote>

No, the code is not correct (says the validator). Some errors have been "fixed" - but the fix just consists of the bothersome part - a bunch of "link" elements - having been commented out. Those "link" elements use XHTML syntax - with an additional "/" at the end. Just get rid of the "/" - the pages are not in XHTML.

However the use of single "&" instead of the correct "&" + "amp;" in URLs remains. That is a typical newbie error.
User avatar
Orbite
Posts: 3757
Joined: November 4th, 2002, 8:23 pm
Contact:

Re: Somebody should fix the quote and delete buttons ...

Post by Orbite »

Johann_P wrote:...I dont really care if the forum is fully W3C
valid as long as it does what it should do and does not exploit browser-specific feature,
that would lock certain browsers out.


:mrgreen: That's why W3C standards were created.
tve
Moderator
Posts: 3275
Joined: November 6th, 2002, 12:07 pm
Location: Federal Republic of Germany

Re: Somebody should fix the quote and delete buttons ...

Post by tve »

Orbite wrote:
Johann_P wrote:...I dont really care if the forum is fully W3C
valid as long as it does what it should do and does not exploit browser-specific feature,
that would lock certain browsers out.


:mrgreen: That's why W3C standards were created.

but a coloured scrollbar code for example has no negative effect on browsers like Mozilla, it's just being ignored, so if one wants to have a coloured scrollbar, thats nothing really bad. ;)
User avatar
Orbite
Posts: 3757
Joined: November 4th, 2002, 8:23 pm
Contact:

Re: Somebody should fix the quote and delete buttons ...

Post by Orbite »

two legged freak wrote:but a coloured scrollbar code for example has no negative effect on browsers ... thats nothing really bad.


The negative effects of encouraging non-standard proprietary code is not felt on browsers (browser don't feel anything) but on us, human users:
  1. It cost more $$$$ to developp sites
  2. It cost more $$$$ to learn how to make it work
  3. It hard to keep up with every new versions of software and at the same time stay compatible with old browsers. Poor people are left out.
  4. You forbid access to people with disabilities
  5. You forbid developpment of alternative web devices
  6. You give up unnecessarly a lot of power to giant corporations like Micro$oft
  7. You trade future developpments for small immediat gains
  8. ....

much more at The Web Standards Project site
tve
Moderator
Posts: 3275
Joined: November 6th, 2002, 12:07 pm
Location: Federal Republic of Germany

Post by tve »

all your points dont make sense when it comes to some simple IE-Only CSS codes like coloured scrollbars, glowing text, alpha filter etc, as these tags are simply ignored by standards compliant browsers and dont have a negative effect on them..
User avatar
Stefan
Posts: 2051
Joined: November 5th, 2002, 2:46 am

Post by Stefan »

two legged freak wrote:all your points dont make sense when it comes to some simple IE-Only CSS codes like coloured scrollbars, glowing text, alpha filter etc, as these tags are simply ignored by standards compliant browsers and dont have a negative effect on them..


Until the W3C wants to implement something, but the implementation is not exatly the same as how it worked in some propietary browser.

Oooooops, what do we do now?
Use another name for the feature (which breaks it in all old browsers using the proprieytary extension) or implement the new method and have it differ in effect between different browsers?

To avoind this is exatly why the CSS spec sais invalid CSS may NOT be renderd at all by browsers, to alow for extensions in the future without compability problems.

BTW, this is also why those nice colored scrollbars doesn't even work in IE 6 in strict parsing mode.

A further important thing... there is nothing preventing eg MS to create their own type="text/MS-CSS-X" mimetype and all their proprietary crap to it. That would not only be alowed by the specs but is actuall promoted in the specs...
User avatar
Orbite
Posts: 3757
Joined: November 4th, 2002, 8:23 pm
Contact:

Post by Orbite »

two legged freak wrote:all your points dont make sense ... as these tags are simply ignored by standards compliant browsers and dont have a negative effect on them.


You are right if you define negative effect as only the ability of showing the main content of a page without making the browser crash. Mozilla will render IE specific pages without puting himself in danger. No problem.

But if you stand back and look at the whole picture you'll see that using non-standard tags or proprietary scripts have an major impact on the state of the Web.

The browser wars (and projects like Mozilla) exists because the incompatibility introduced with non-standard practices makes thing difficult for us users and site conceptors. The one who gain most profit from this law of the jungle and encourages it is Microsoft. He managed to throw at the competition more changes, while still adapt to the ones made by their competitor, and officialy (in appearence) support W3C standards. In this jungle of multiple ways of doing things, Microsoft faught non-standard compliant browser on the W3C terrain, and standard compliant browser with flashy gammicks and features.

The one who pay for this never ending job and this diversity of standards is us. We have to buy new software and new hardware all the time. Did you know that HTML is permanently fixed (HTML 4.01 is the last and final version, 1997) and will be never change anymore, thus a good standard compliant browser could last you for the rest of your life?
Locked