61 anything goes (not)

Look, most browsers already follow certain rules and standards. That’s why many tags work as we expect them to, and basically compel us to code in certain ways. If they didn’t, then why have tags at all? Why even have a language like (X)HTML at all (which is also based on rules and practices)? Asking for browsers to be a bit more strict is not the same as calling for “regulation” by some unseen government. And I don’t think it will “break the web” either. The other implication of what I read from some posters goes something like this: “let’s not bother trying to educate people who are probably incapable of understanding html or how to make web pages that will reach the broadest possible audience. Let’s just keep everyone at the lowest common denominator of knowledge and skill. And don’t bother informing and educating people about how to make their pages more accessible, or that making pages with certain programs or methods will leave these pages inaccessible to readers who rely on assistive devices.” What kind of freedom are we talking about? This reminds me a bit of Rousseau — we may need to give up some of our ‘natural’ liberty (no rules at all, a state of nature) in order to achieve a form of ‘civil’ liberty on the web — which is a form of association and yes, in some sense, a social order.

posted at 06:57 pm on March 30, 2007 by Peter Weil

62 FuseBox?

@54: You mean fusebox.org where the use of whitespace before the doctype declaration ensures that IE will bounce into Quirks mode even though it is declared as XHTML1.0 Strict (no, there’s 24 errors, so it isn’t)?
As for Google, I just don’t understand how such a simple home page can have 30 errors on it (.co.uk) and that they can’t be bothered in their 20% of hacking time to just fix the bloody thing. Even slightly. The fact that the page still works is more luck (and browsers accepting all kinds of crap) than judgement.

posted at 08:27 pm on May 2, 2007 by Philip Green

63 Untitled

Send Google’s website through the W3C validator. Look at the number and kind of errors you get. Remember that this is probably the one most visited website in the world, made by some of the top professionals in the field, aiming at the highest possible crossbrowser compatibility and user accessibility.

Only a few months back I was constantly exhausted and approaching a serious depression. I wanted to be at the forefront of technology. I felt proud. I made every webpage I designed to validate as XHTML strict. All websites looked just supercool in Firefox, but shitty in at least a quarter of the browsers used by my visitors. I did not sleep much, because I tried to meet deadlines and still vertically center some liquid CSS tag-soup in IE 5 Mac. I often cried and hated to be alive for the first time since leaving puberty.

Until I looked a Google’s sourcecode and realized that I had been wasting my life over nothing.

XHTML and CSS were developed by folks who frequent text only websites. LOOK at the sites these guys output! I do graphics. Now I again do what works best. I use a mixture of tables layout and CSS today. Some of my code still validates. I sleep well. My sites look just perfect in all browsers (even Lynx).

If you think about this, you will easily understand why the movement to propagate web standards failed. Because no-one will give up eating with his fingers for a blunt knife and flat spoon.

posted at 01:38 pm on May 19, 2007 by Lars Eijssen

64 Untitled

You can validate font tags, unquoted attributes, unsemantic markup and bold tags instead of proper headings

posted at 01:52 am on May 28, 2007 by Aukcje Internetowe