fiesty_01 — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 07:07:09 +0000

"Troublesome" is a word I would choose also. Hey, it was worth a shot wasn't it?

By the way, I like that {echo ("it wasn't me ;)} thing in your signature. Ever seen the Disney movie "Rocketman" starring Harland Williams?

Busy — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 03:49:49 +0000

you can use javascript to "try" pick the version that works most of the time (opera can appear as ie ...) and if the person has javascript turned off (as many do these days to avoid pop ups) it wont work.
so goes back to Megans comment above.

Some people have 3, 4 or 5+ browsers on their computer and still have problems in others, I have 6 browsers but dont have IE6 or NS6 which can be troublesome.

Megan — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 02:39:17 +0000

LOL! Don't we wish it was that simple! See, this is what authoring in standards is all about. Theoretically, if you write your code properly, your page should look the same in all browsers. Of course, if you had a computer you'd have all the different browsers available, so you could take a quick look and make sure things look right before going back to the code.

fiesty_01 — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 02:23:07 +0000

Are there any CSS, XML, XHTML, JavaScript, etc., codes (other than the CSS you have all been talking about) that are written like the following to tell the web page how to fit in whichever browsers you want it to "fit" it?

In other words, some such code might look something like the following (this is just made-up):

fit=IE 2, 3, 4, 5; NS 1-3>

So, the above made-up code would tell the website you've created to adjust to look good in the 2-5 versions of IE (Internet Explorer) and the 1-3 versions of NS (Netscape).

There probably isn't any such coding, but I just wanted to make sure.

Busy — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 22:07:58 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by fiesty_01
Busy: What does the following do?

Tells the browsers what version of doc it is (text/html) and lanuage (iso-8859-1) english or in proper terms the character encoding used.

Megan — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 15:10:25 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by fiesty_01
I have also run XHTML validation checks of other sites on the net (nobody's site on here) and the validator has come up with even more errors than what I had to begin with on these sites. How are these sites getting by with this?

It's suprising how many people out there develop websites for a living and have no clue about standards. A lot of people seem to think that HTML is something you learn once and never have to think about again. Some of them may not even know how to code at all, so they use a non-standard supporting visual editor. Some of these editors have improved a lot in terms of standards support (and one of them is excellent in that regard), but if people don't know what the code is doing, or even look at what it's doing, they're gong to have a hard time writing valid code. A lot of these HTML editors need to be doing more to promote standards and help people write better code.

This matter is complicated when you get into big sites that use a lot of server-side scripting and different people working on the same project. You may have a backend programmer and a content editor working on the site that know very little about HTML. Do they need to become HTML experts? No, that wouldn't be the most efficient way to operate. Certainly they should have some sort of understanding of standards though. One solution is to rethink the way the development process works. Another possibility is a new tool from Macromedia, which is specifically designed for these types of situations.

I honestly think that the key to keeping current in the web industry is to hang out at a place like this. There is no other way to find out what the new technologies are and how to use them practically (unless you really want to read through all that technical stuff on the w3c site and figure it out for yourself - I'm sorry, I don't have that kind of time). Here you'll find out what kind of standards people use, and what techniques they use to make their sites look good *and* validate.

Suzanne — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 14:09:40 +0000

Most of the web is a mess, codewise. Use anything other than IE (and heck, even in IE of any flavour) and at least 40% of the sites you visit will be broken in some way, from just presentation (Microsoft doesn't render properly in Netscape 7 at all, because the people who coded it don't know what they are doing), to serious display errors that render the site unusable.

The point of standards is a) less work for the developer to make it work everywhere, b) more consistent display in a wider variety of browsers, c) future-proofing (to some extent) so we can finally move forward instead of endlessly revising the old content for design issues only (revisions will clearly be needed if the content changes, or needs updating, but it's ridiculous to endlessly revise the content because you change your company colours).

And if you had a pc, you could use a better system -- even without using a WYSIWYG HTML editor, you can write the code in a text editor (there are several that are free or inexpensive, and a number that cost a bit but are bloody marvelous), and ftp the files to the server (send the files directly, without them being parsed or interpreted).

The Webmistress — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 12:24:55 +0000

The reason why other sites will come up with errors may be that the person who build the site didn't check for errors! Pages will still display but they may not be 'correct' by the current standards or they may not have been coded to XHTML standards.

fiesty_01 — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 06:48:59 +0000

Correction: I'm gonna try to take off work from Dec. 1 - 7 (not Nov., hehe).

Anyone care to comment on my last question about some popular websites on the net coming up with a lot of XHTML errors in the validator?

Busy: What does the following do?

fiesty_01 — Sun, 24 Nov 2002 23:54:02 +0000

Thanks Suzanne. Good explanation (now you're talking in "my" language!).

I do wonder why the Angelfire editor is screwing with my code anyway, and how I would avoid this using the same Angelfire editor (or different editors) on an actual PC (?).

I have also run XHTML validation checks of other sites on the net (nobody's site on here) and the validator has come up with even more errors than what I had to begin with on these sites. How are these sites getting by with this?