Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
[Lachlan wrote: Since, as you say, it's trivial to use such tools for XHTML, it's also trivial to convert from XHTML to HTML 4 on the fly using XSLT or some other method.] You are right, it is trivial to convert XHTML to HTML 4 - it only takes about 15 lines of XSLT code. I have no objection to people doing this but I would not waste CPU cycles for this. [Lachlan wrote: ...it just requires SGML tools, instead of XML tools] Now, let's have a race; I'll write code to convert XHTML to HTML using XML tools and you write code to convert HTML to XHTML using SGML tools. Sorry, I'm kidding; just wanted to illustrate the ease of use of XML tools over SGML tools :-) [Lachlan wrote: I challenge you to name several readily available off-the-shelf CMSs that actually do make use of XML tools.] Here comes shameless self promotion - any CMS that uses XStandard. Regards, -Vlad http://xstandard.com Original Message From: Lachlan Hunt Date: 12/3/2005 11:25 PM Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote: User agents come and go, so how one browser parses markup is so trivial in the larger scheme of things. What is really important is content. If people write content in HTML they are creating legacy data because it is not easily parsable from a content management perspective. Yes it is, it just requires SGML tools, instead of XML tools. This all comes down to using the right tool for the job. Content written in HTML cannot easily be re-purposed. If you have 1,000 documents and you want to change some markup in all of them, it is very difficult to do this if these documents are in HTML. If the documents are in XML (XHTML), then this is a trivial task using off-the-shelf technologies like DOM/SAX parsers or XSLT. The same is true of HTML, it just requires that you use SGML tools to process it, rather than XML tools, and SGML tools have been available for much longer than XML tools; they're just not so widely deployed because HTML is rarely treated as an application of SGML anyway. Since, as you say, it's trivial to use such tools for XHTML, it's also trivial to convert from XHTML to HTML 4 on the fly using XSLT or some other method. So we need to start writing content in XML and if it's content destined for the Web, then XHTML is perfect. The next step is: if you write it in XHTML, then why not serve it in XHTML (even if right now it's still processed by some current browsers as HTML). Such use cases require XML tools, with a CMS that uses such tools to guarantee well-formed input and output. It also requires that the author be competent enough to develop and test and a completely XML environment, even if it's delivered to the world as text/html. I do agree that XHTML on the back end does have significant authoring benefits for those experienced and competent enough to do so, but we're talking about beginners who are unlikely to have such tools at their disposal and are extremely likely to be developing and testing in an HTML environment. As I have said many times, learning XHTML that way is not a good idea, and it is the responsibility of those of us teaching it to make sure it is learned correctly, not incorrectly as you seem to be pushing. Additionally, how many commonly used, off-the-shelf CMSs that claim to output XHTML as text/html, or in fact any CMS regardless of its output, actually make use of XML tools? WordPress certainly doesn't, it uses string substitutions and doesn't guarantee well-formed output, as do others such as MovableType, Blogger, etc. I challenge you to name several readily available off-the-shelf CMSs that actually do make use of XML tools. As of yet, I have not found any that do, let alone guarantee 100% well-formed output. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
On 12/4/05, XStandard Vlad Alexander [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Here comes shameless self promotion - any CMS that uses XStandard.
Though the moment that someone starts doing some scripting they are
doomed probably. (As it differs.) Or body { background:#eee } in
CSS...
--
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/
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Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote: Lachlan wrote: I challenge you to name several readily available off-the-shelf CMSs that actually do make use of XML tools. Here comes shameless self promotion - any CMS that uses XStandard. I meant on the back end. The use of XStandard on the front end doesn't guarentee well formed input or output from all sources. What about user's leaving comments with embedded markup, trackbacks, pingbacks, etc. What about stripping and replacing named entity references? What about handling character encoding issues properly, which is supposed to cause fatal well-formedness errors (although it doesn't in Gecko). What if a user doesn't install the XStandard plugin and just uses a text area for input? All of these issues require proper XML processing on the back end, and you can't seriously claim that all CMSs using XStandard on the front end, do so on the back end too. Plus, you still run into trouble when the user includes scripts and styles written for text/html and untested in XML. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards - ADMIN THREAD CLOSED
ADMIN THREAD CLOSED Please do not reply to this thread on list. If you wish to answer the original question, please do so offlist. Reason for closure: This thread has moved a long way from the original question. It has now moved into the area of strongly held personal opinions. This is just one step away from things getting messy. If you are concerned about the closing of this thread, do not express your opinion/concern/anger/joy to the list. Instead, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks you Russ I challenge you to name several readily available off-the-shelf CMSs that actually do make use of XML tools. Here comes shameless self promotion - any CMS that uses XStandard. I meant on the back end. The use of XStandard on the front end doesn't guarentee well formed input or output from all sources. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
I'm going to have to go with Lachlan on this one. IE has as much support for XHTML as it does for application/foo-bar. If I serve my application/foo-bar as text/plain, IE will display the page as plain text. If it 'looks' correct that is only a coincidence. More importantly IE's HTML parser is not just a standard SGML parser for certain cases. Try using a DTD and specifying extra entities. HTML has been broken because people did not follow the specs. Indeed, if browsers started treating entities properly there would be an increadible amount of pages broken for missuse of . If you want another potentially good thing gone bad from missuse you don't have to look any furthur than RSS and it's 9 (I think, but it could easily be higher) almost completely incompatible versions. And for each version there's people sending it with at least 3 different mime-types. Sometimes people escape they're encoding and sometimes they don't. It's no wonder that you'll often see lt;emgt; and such in rss headlines. Finally XHTML is XML that looks like HTML, not the other way around. I don't think it's a good idea to teach newcomers about XHTML until they have a fairly good grasp of what XML is - otherwise they'll just be doing glorified HTML with /'s at the end of empty elements. On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 09:50 -0500, Vlad Alexander wrote: [Lachlan wrote: IE has no native support for XHTML at all.] So it's not native support but there _is_ support. How can you tell if there is support, well, you do test-cases. If one can produce a test-case of valid XHTML served as HTML to IE and IE parses it correctly, then there is support. Why should we care if IE use an SGML or an XML parser to process the markup? The main thing is that markup is parsed correctly and there is no data loss. How can IE do this reliably? Because valid XHTML markup written to comparability guidelines is a sub-set of HTML. __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Alan Trick wrote: If you want another potentially good thing gone bad from missuse you don't have to look any furthur than RSS and it's 9 (I think, but it could easily be higher) almost completely incompatible versions. It was 10 at last count, 9 mentioned here http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss plus RSS 1.1 which was developed a little more recently. http://annevankesteren.nl/2005/01/rss-11 That leaves Atom 1.0 as the only feed format people should bother using, now that Atom 0.3 is officially deprecated. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards- THREAD CLOSED
ADMIN THREAD CLOSED AGAIN! ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Matthew Cruickshank wrote: Lachlan Hunt wrote: Yes. Why should we attempt to hide the truth from them, especially when they're just starting out and they need to lose/avoid any bad habits and mistakes as quickly as possible. Yours is a fringe and pedantic opinion, and you're being ridiculously harsh on XHTML. I have not been harsh on XHTML at all, I do like XHTML and it does have a lot of benefits when used properly, but if it's going to be used, it really needs to be done right and fully understood for what it is, or it should not be used at all. HTML is already broken beyond all repair because of all the broken implementations and people doing it wrongly without caring about the consequences, and I don't want that to happen with XHTML. Although with the number of people jumping on the XHTML bandwagon just because it's the latest and greatest standard, believing the myths that it's widely supported, usable and that their doing it correctly, when the vast majority of authors clearly aren't, has already done more damage than good. I might add that my fringe and pedantic opinion is based on fact, and that not one valid technical argument has yet been raised in this thread against any of the technical reasons I've posted. Additionally, a significant portion of the replies against me have been little more than judgements about how appropriate it was or was not for me to give such advice to a newcomer; which is not very constructive at all. I'm glad that people have been speaking up so that hopefully Lori will see that it's not so black and white an issue. I'm happy for people to speak up and challenge my views; in fact I encourage it, that's part of what forums like this are for and opinions that can't stand up to such challenges are not worth retaining. I realise the issue is not so black and white for some people, hence why this topic has been and will rehashed again and again on every forum, newsgroup, mailing lists, blog and whatever else around the world for a very long time. So, let it be discussed, and let the newcomers benefit from such discussion, but lets keep the discussion on the issue, rather than attacking another person's views without backing up your own with valid, technical arguments. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote: Lachlan, you have been on this list long enough to know that when you make extreme statements such as since you're new, you might want to stick with HTML4 or IE does not support XHTML, that debate will ensue. So be it. If there are still people that don't understand XHTML for what it is, yet blindly attempt to use it, then the issues need to be discussed. This is not what newcomers to Web Standards need. A better approach would have been to ask why this person needs/wants to use XHTML and if he/she has a good reason to do so, give this person advice on how to do it right. Thank you for this very constructive advice, in future I will be more careful about how I phrase such things. But my message still stands: XHTML is not appropriate for an inexperienced HTML author to use, particularly with the current level of browser support. To address your statement that IE does not support XHTML - this is not true. IE does support XHTML 1.0 - you and I just don't like the level of support IE offers. No, the fact is that IE has no native support for XHTML at all. By the same logic you're claiming that it has limited support, then I could invent my own FooML language using similar element names and attributes to HTML, register the MIME type application/fooml+xml for it to use, serve it as text/html and claim that IE has limited support: !DOCTYPE FooML SYSTEM http://example.org/fooml/dtd; fooml xmlns=http://example.org/fooml/namespace; titleThis is a FooML Document/title pIf I serve this as text/html, then IE will seem to support it./p pI can even use scripts with a MIME type it it doesn't normally recognise./p script content-type=application/ecmascript alert(Hello World!); // Since content-type is an non-existent attribute in HTML, // the MIME type is ignored and tag soup browsers assumes it's // JavaScript, even though most current browsers only widely // recognise text/javascript. /script /fooml Would you agree that IE has no support for FooML, or would you claim that it has limited support because the result is acceptable, when served with the wrong MIME type? If you serve valid XHTML as HTML to IE, will there be any data loss? No! If you serve invalid, ill-formed XHTML to any browser as text/html, will there be any data loss? The answer is the same, but that doesn't make it right. Now, I don't want to give Hickson any more of my attention. But I will say that he and his groupies are not interested in teaching people how to use XHTML correctly. I am interested in teaching people to use XHTML correctly, but experience shows that newcomers are far better off sticking with HTML4 until they are confident enough to fully understand the ramifications of using XHTML. If we want to teach XHTML correctly, I'm all for doing so, but *we should actually teach XHTML /correctly/*. Despite any objections to the contrary, that means using the correct MIME type and gaining a full understanding of all the differences between HTML and XHTML, rather than just doing half the job by teaching them the syntax, getting them to throw in a few extra slashes and leaving it at that, thinking the rest is all the same as HTML. That is *not* teaching them correctly, and it's doing much more harm than good. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
[Lachlan wrote: IE has no native support for XHTML at all.] So it's not native support but there _is_ support. How can you tell if there is support, well, you do test-cases. If one can produce a test-case of valid XHTML served as HTML to IE and IE parses it correctly, then there is support. Why should we care if IE use an SGML or an XML parser to process the markup? The main thing is that markup is parsed correctly and there is no data loss. How can IE do this reliably? Because valid XHTML markup written to comparability guidelines is a sub-set of HTML. [Lachlan wrote: If you serve invalid, ill-formed XHTML to any browser as text/html, will there be any data loss? The answer is the same [No].] That's not strictly the case, because whenever you write any markup not to specification, there is a chance of it being parsed incorrectly, resulting in data loss or incorrect association of data. I speak as a software engineer who has written parsers, but don't take my word for it. Try this test: take a bunch of real use Word documents, save them out as HTML and then run HTML Tidy on them. I bet there will be some data loss. That is not to say that Tidy has a bad parser (on the contrary); but markup not written to specification is at risk for data loss. Even WCAG 2.0 recognizes it in Guideline 4.1. http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-20051123/complete.html#use-spec As far as MIME types are concerned, we live in the real world, and until IE natively supports XHTML, we need to serve XHTML 1.0 as HTML to IE. We should not throw the baby (XHTML) out with the bathwater (IE 6). User agents come and go, so how one browser parses markup is so trivial in the larger scheme of things. What is really important is content. If people write content in HTML they are creating legacy data because it is not easily parsable from a content management perspective. Content written in HTML cannot easily be re-purposed. If you have 1,000 documents and you want to change some markup in all of them, it is very difficult to do this if these documents are in HTML. If the documents are in XML (XHTML), then this is a trivial task using off-the-shelf technologies like DOM/SAX parsers or XSLT. So we need to start writing content in XML and if it's content destined for the Web, then XHTML is perfect. The next step is: if you write it in XHTML, then why not serve it in XHTML (even if right now it's still processed by some current browsers as HTML). Regards, -Vlad http://xstandard.com Original Message From: Lachlan Hunt Date: 12/3/2005 5:50 AM Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote: Lachlan, you have been on this list long enough to know that when you make extreme statements such as since you're new, you might want to stick with HTML4 or IE does not support XHTML, that debate will ensue. So be it. If there are still people that don't understand XHTML for what it is, yet blindly attempt to use it, then the issues need to be discussed. This is not what newcomers to Web Standards need. A better approach would have been to ask why this person needs/wants to use XHTML and if he/she has a good reason to do so, give this person advice on how to do it right. Thank you for this very constructive advice, in future I will be more careful about how I phrase such things. But my message still stands: XHTML is not appropriate for an inexperienced HTML author to use, particularly with the current level of browser support. To address your statement that IE does not support XHTML - this is not true. IE does support XHTML 1.0 - you and I just don't like the level of support IE offers. No, the fact is that IE has no native support for XHTML at all. By the same logic you're claiming that it has limited support, then I could invent my own FooML language using similar element names and attributes to HTML, register the MIME type application/fooml+xml for it to use, serve it as text/html and claim that IE has limited support: !DOCTYPE FooML SYSTEM http://example.org/fooml/dtd; fooml xmlns=http://example.org/fooml/namespace; titleThis is a FooML Document/title pIf I serve this as text/html, then IE will seem to support it./p pI can even use scripts with a MIME type it it doesn't normally recognise./p script content-type=application/ecmascript alert(Hello World!); // Since content-type is an non-existent attribute in HTML, // the MIME type is ignored and tag soup browsers assumes it's // JavaScript, even though most current browsers only widely // recognise text/javascript. /script /fooml Would you agree that IE has no support for FooML, or would you claim that it has limited support because the result is acceptable, when served with the wrong MIME type? If you serve valid XHTML as HTML to IE, will there be any data loss? No! If you serve invalid, ill-formed XHTML to any browser as text/html, will there be any data loss? The answer is the same, but that doesn't make it
RE: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Lachlan, I was a science major in college and went into biotech which is dominated by men. Your advice to me as a newcomer to just stick with HTML4 rather than to try to learn the right way to use XHTML right off the bat reminded me of the experiences I have had in science that I believe have been sexist. Lots of grown men behave like middle school boys that don't want to share their toys with the girls. Maybe you are wondering why I am not making quilts with the girls instead of trying to construct a web page? I think I will start attending a local user group rather than using this list as I think people behave differently face to face and maybe some women will be there. Thanks for those of you that have commented constructively about IE and tidy. I took an HTML II online course with HWG and they do not even mention text editors exist and would have saved me a lot of time. I am just using Notepad now to write SCRICT code and rather than reaching for a reference book to remember a small detail or rather than running it through a validator, I thought a text editor might help. I can certainly research text editors myself but thought my question would be interesting for this list to address in terms of trying to stick to standards. Lori -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lachlan Hunt Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 5:50 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards Matthew Cruickshank wrote: Lachlan Hunt wrote: Yes. Why should we attempt to hide the truth from them, especially when they're just starting out and they need to lose/avoid any bad habits and mistakes as quickly as possible. Yours is a fringe and pedantic opinion, and you're being ridiculously harsh on XHTML. I have not been harsh on XHTML at all, I do like XHTML and it does have a lot of benefits when used properly, but if it's going to be used, it really needs to be done right and fully understood for what it is, or it should not be used at all. HTML is already broken beyond all repair because of all the broken implementations and people doing it wrongly without caring about the consequences, and I don't want that to happen with XHTML. Although with the number of people jumping on the XHTML bandwagon just because it's the latest and greatest standard, believing the myths that it's widely supported, usable and that their doing it correctly, when the vast majority of authors clearly aren't, has already done more damage than good. I might add that my fringe and pedantic opinion is based on fact, and that not one valid technical argument has yet been raised in this thread against any of the technical reasons I've posted. Additionally, a significant portion of the replies against me have been little more than judgements about how appropriate it was or was not for me to give such advice to a newcomer; which is not very constructive at all. I'm glad that people have been speaking up so that hopefully Lori will see that it's not so black and white an issue. I'm happy for people to speak up and challenge my views; in fact I encourage it, that's part of what forums like this are for and opinions that can't stand up to such challenges are not worth retaining. I realise the issue is not so black and white for some people, hence why this topic has been and will rehashed again and again on every forum, newsgroup, mailing lists, blog and whatever else around the world for a very long time. So, let it be discussed, and let the newcomers benefit from such discussion, but lets keep the discussion on the issue, rather than attacking another person's views without backing up your own with valid, technical arguments. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
I'm trying to use TSWebEditor (www.tswebeditor.tk) at the moment. It has a few annoying features but that is offset by a host of good things (including PHP script debugging - if you need it :) and CSS Editing dialogs) I'm a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to editors and use SCITE because what it does, it does well. HTH Stephen -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lori Cole Sent: 03 December 2005 15:24 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards Lachlan, I was a science major in college and went into biotech which is dominated by men. Your advice to me as a newcomer to just stick with HTML4 rather than to try to learn the right way to use XHTML right off the bat reminded me of the experiences I have had in science that I believe have been sexist. Lots of grown men behave like middle school boys that don't want to share their toys with the girls. Maybe you are wondering why I am not making quilts with the girls instead of trying to construct a web page? I think I will start attending a local user group rather than using this list as I think people behave differently face to face and maybe some women will be there. Thanks for those of you that have commented constructively about IE and tidy. I took an HTML II online course with HWG and they do not even mention text editors exist and would have saved me a lot of time. I am just using Notepad now to write SCRICT code and rather than reaching for a reference book to remember a small detail or rather than running it through a validator, I thought a text editor might help. I can certainly research text editors myself but thought my question would be interesting for this list to address in terms of trying to stick to standards. Lori -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lachlan Hunt Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 5:50 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards Matthew Cruickshank wrote: Lachlan Hunt wrote: Yes. Why should we attempt to hide the truth from them, especially when they're just starting out and they need to lose/avoid any bad habits and mistakes as quickly as possible. Yours is a fringe and pedantic opinion, and you're being ridiculously harsh on XHTML. I have not been harsh on XHTML at all, I do like XHTML and it does have a lot of benefits when used properly, but if it's going to be used, it really needs to be done right and fully understood for what it is, or it should not be used at all. HTML is already broken beyond all repair because of all the broken implementations and people doing it wrongly without caring about the consequences, and I don't want that to happen with XHTML. Although with the number of people jumping on the XHTML bandwagon just because it's the latest and greatest standard, believing the myths that it's widely supported, usable and that their doing it correctly, when the vast majority of authors clearly aren't, has already done more damage than good. I might add that my fringe and pedantic opinion is based on fact, and that not one valid technical argument has yet been raised in this thread against any of the technical reasons I've posted. Additionally, a significant portion of the replies against me have been little more than judgements about how appropriate it was or was not for me to give such advice to a newcomer; which is not very constructive at all. I'm glad that people have been speaking up so that hopefully Lori will see that it's not so black and white an issue. I'm happy for people to speak up and challenge my views; in fact I encourage it, that's part of what forums like this are for and opinions that can't stand up to such challenges are not worth retaining. I realise the issue is not so black and white for some people, hence why this topic has been and will rehashed again and again on every forum, newsgroup, mailing lists, blog and whatever else around the world for a very long time. So, let it be discussed, and let the newcomers benefit from such discussion, but lets keep the discussion on the issue, rather than attacking another person's views without backing up your own with valid, technical arguments. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Rimantas Liubertas wrote: The main thing is, that if parsed correctly by HTML parser XTHML would even produce more data, or to say it more exact, browsers would show more. I mean an extra popping up for every br / and img .../. Those compatibility guidelines rely solely on browsers failing to implement SHORTTAG in correct way. So standards are created in a real world environment, and take advantage of weaknesses created in the past. Nothing gets broken because of it - probably because the old rendering is already FUBAR[1] by design. Now, let us try to prevent that happening in the future, and let the past take care of its own problems. No need to drag it along or drag it out. We have more than enough real world problems in need of solutions in order to get our efforts through in a constantly changing and pretty buggy set of environments across browser-land. Let us focus on solving those, and make sure newcomers get it right also - preferably from the very beginning. regards Georg [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fubar -- http://www.gunlaug.no ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Lori Cole wrote: I think I will start attending a local user group rather than using this list as I think people behave differently face to face[...] Lowri, I agree that people sometimes behave differently face to face. My impression is that the response you received was not due to any sexism - there are many women who participate in this list. Your impression may be due to what some might style arrogance but I would simply call it impoliteness. Taking the time to construct thoughtful responses in language that will most benefit the audience rather than the reputation of the writer is something we all need a reminder on now and again I think. What I would say is that after many years of participating in mailing lists etc. what's often lacking is courtesy and social skills rather than willingness to share knowledge. In fact it's the opposite; knowledge is often shared willingly for a price which can sometimes include an impolite tone to the language. I do not relate this to the WSG list specifically, IMO it is a symptom of online communities generally and perhaps egos specifically. There are many contributors to this mailing list that are worth listening to even if some of the language gives the impression of lacking in graciousness. I'd say that any lapse only relects on the person writing not the audience reading, nor the list in general from my observations. So don't miss out on the important bit regardless of anything else: The knowledge. I am just using Notepad now to write SCRICT code and rather than reaching for a reference book to remember a small detail or rather than running it through a validator, I thought a text editor might help. I can certainly research text editors myself but thought my question would be interesting for this list to address in terms of trying to stick to standards. Other have advised on specific tools. My advice would be that colour highlighting of code will help you immensly as you learn and many free editors either support standards / xhtml etc or have user-contributed plug-ins to do so. Cheking your code with the a validator will also help you along the way. In any case, you can definitely do better than notepad. Good luck. Jon Tan www.gr0w.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
On 12/3/05, Lori Cole [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lachlan, I was a science major in college and went into biotech which is dominated by men. Your advice to me as a newcomer to just stick with HTML4 rather than to try to learn the right way to use XHTML right off the bat reminded me of the experiences I have had in science that I believe have been sexist. Lots of grown men behave like middle school boys that don't want to share their toys with the girls. Maybe you are wondering why I am not making quilts with the girls instead of trying to construct a web page? I think I will start attending a local user group rather than using this list as I think people behave differently face to face and maybe some women will be there. Thanks for those of you that have commented constructively about IE and tidy. I took an HTML II online course with HWG and they do not even mention text editors exist and would have saved me a lot of time. Lori, don't give up on us so fast. I can assure you that Lachlan's comments were not meant to be sexist, and I think the discussion that ensued has been helpful for us all. Even if someone on this list does say something you don't like, don't let it discourage you, because there are still a couple thousand other people that can be useful in answering your questions. And yes, there are women here. As far as editors go, I still use Notepad and Wordpad... maybe I should look into something new too. -- -- Christian Montoya christianmontoya.com ... rdpdesign.com ... cssliquid.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Lori Cole wrote: I think I will start attending a local user group rather than using this list as I think people behave differently face to face and maybe some women will be there. Thanks for those of you that have commented constructively about IE and tidy. I took an HTML II online course with HWG and they do not even mention text editors exist and would have saved me a lot of time. I am just using Notepad now to write SCRICT code and rather than reaching for a reference book to remember a small detail or rather than running it through a validator, I thought a text editor might help. I can certainly research text editors myself but thought my question would be interesting for this list to address in terms of trying to stick to standards. Lori Lori I would try to find an editor that can offer you some enhanced features for editing and managing code as well as to increase the speed with which you can develop code. I mentioned earlier on this list that I use HTML-Kit (http://www.chami.com/html-kit/). I also use NotePad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) both of these programs offer line numbering and code colorization. These are the two most important features you can have over notepad. If you need to debug or are validating you need to know what line numbers you have. Other features that are a benefit are element folding/collapsing which Notepad++ has so if you are only wanting to look at parent elements and not their child elements it makes this easier. I suppose this would help lost in DOM scripting, though I am only learning about this. The reason I use HTML-Kit is that it is highly customizable and that it allows for me to default to whatever DTD I want. In addition, there are hundreds of plug ins and addons. The other and the main reason I use it is that I can file manage from the application and it allows for local or FTP file editing. There are all sorts of free text editors though and I would try as many of them as possible. They mostly all just be text editors but some people swear by them. Hope this helps. All the best, Jay ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Christian Montoya wrote: Lori, don't give up on us so fast. I can assure you that Lachlan's comments were not meant to be sexist, and I think the discussion that ensued has been helpful for us all. Even if someone on this list does say something you don't like, don't let it discourage you, because there are still a couple thousand other people that can be useful in answering your questions. And yes, there are women here. As far as editors go, I still use Notepad and Wordpad... maybe I should look into something new too. -- -- Christian Montoya I second these comments, and although debate sometimes ensues, generally, everyone is trying to be helpful and contribute, and quite often there are valid points on both sides (if that makes sense). Other text editors to look at; http://www.vim.org/ and http://webstandardsgroup.org/go/resourcecat30.cfm TopStyle Lite is the free cut down version of TopStyle Pro (http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/tslite/) Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
and http://webstandardsgroup.org/go/resourcecat30.cfm Or http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssEditors I personally use BBEdit on OSX and PSPad on WXP (+ jEdit and Eclipse on both). -- Jan Brasna aka JohnyB :: www.alphanumeric.cz | www.janbrasna.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Lachlan Hunt wrote: I might add that my fringe and pedantic opinion is based on fact, and that not one valid technical argument has yet been raised in this thread against any of the technical reasons I've posted. Ah, but the argument is not strictly one of technicalities -- it's a matter of opinion about what is sufficient support and what compliance means. You've arbitrarily decided that IE has sufficient support for HTML but not XHTML, that the internal rendering engine affects XHTML compliance, and that IE doesn't even have limited support for XHTML is an appropriate way of describing the situation. None of these opinions is based on W3C standards, and so it's difficult to refute your ideas. We can only rely on common sense prevailing and hopefully people will see that your opinions are on the fringe. This is not another opportunity for you to derail this thread with more technical references. No one disagrees with that -- this thread is about how it's best to teach people web standards. And you fail it. .Matthew Cruickshank http://holloway.co.nz/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Matthew Cruickshank wrote: Lachlan Hunt wrote: I might add that my fringe and pedantic opinion is based on fact, and that not one valid technical argument has yet been raised in this thread against any of the technical reasons I've posted. Ah, but the argument is not strictly one of technicalities -- it's a matter of opinion about what is sufficient support and what compliance means. You've arbitrarily decided that IE has sufficient support for HTML but not XHTML, That's because IE's parsing and rendering engines were not built with XHTML processing in mind at all, they were only built HTML in mind. The fact that XHTML is compatible with such broken HTML parsers is irrelvant to the fact that it doesn't actually support it at all. MIME types are what matters, DOCTYPEs don't (except insofar as quirks/standards mode are concerned). Regardless of what the DOCTYPE says and the syntax used, if it's labelled as text/html, it's HTML, albeit very likely invalid HTML that relies on the undefined and reverse engineered error handling behaviour of browsers to support it. that the internal rendering engine affects XHTML compliance The rendering engine itself doesn't affect the compliance of the document, the MIME type it's delivered with, however, does; and the idea of using the wrong MIME type to trick some ancient browser into doing something useful with the document is ludicrous. How many XHTML as text/html documents out there do you think actually conform 100% to the guidelines set forth in Appendix C? Virtually nil! None of these opinions is based on W3C standards, and so it's difficult to refute your ideas. There are no W3C standards on this matter, or at least none that can be taken seriously. XHTML 1.0, section 5.1 Internet Media Type states: | XHTML Documents which follow the guidelines set forth in Appendix C, | HTML Compatibility Guidelines may be labeled with the Internet Media | Type text/html [RFC2854], as they are compatible with most HTML | browsers. Those documents, and any other document conforming to this | specification, may also be labeled with the Internet Media Type | application/xhtml+xml as defined in [RFC3236]. For further | information on using media types with XHTML, see the informative note | [XHTMLMIME]. Although that section claims to be normative, it references an *informative* appendix and *informative* note. Appendix C has been successfully disputed many times and because it's informative, it can't be normatively referenced anyway. So, while technically serving XHTML as text/html is allowed, that doesn't make it a good idea. All the purported benefits of XHTML are nothing short of meaningless in a text/html environment, so why bother teaching it to newcomers, when there is sufficient evidence to show that the vast majority learn it wrongly? This is not another opportunity for you to derail this thread with more technical references. No one disagrees with that -- this thread is about how it's best to teach people web standards. And you fail it. It is about both. They are not mutually exclusive topics, you can't talk about the reasons for teaching XHTML without talking about and satisfying the technical reasons for using it in the first place. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards
Lori Cole wrote: I was a science major in college and went into biotech which is dominated by men. Your advice to me as a newcomer to just stick with HTML4 rather than to try to learn the right way to use XHTML right off the bat reminded me of the experiences I have had in science that I believe have been sexist. I have no idea how you could have interpreted my advice as being sexist in any way. In fact, I had no idea whether you were really male or female; because experience tells me that guessing a persons gender in an online community based on their name, when I know nothing of their culture or country of origin, is often an incorrect guess, so I assure you my comment was not meant as discriminatory in any way whatsoever. My advice comes purely from my experience. Evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of people who attempt XHTML, often fail miserably to grasp the differences between HTML and XHTML. Not only are most sites claiming to be XHTML served as text/html not even well-formed, they often suffer from any number of other problems I have mentioned in this thread, and any future attempt at simply changing the MIME type will fail miserably. If you choose to learn XHTML, I strongly advise you to gain a very good understanding of valid, semantic, non-presentational HTML first; you can't even begin to grasp the differences between HTML and XHTML if you don't know HTML first, let alone gain any serious benefit at all from using XHTML. I urge you to prove me wrong, and show that you can learn XHTML correctly as a beginner without much HTML experience, but please understand that you are not the first to try, nor will you be the last, and the odds are not in your favour. If you must go ahead with XHTML, then please at least develop and test your pages in an XML environment, even if you end up serving your pages to the world as text/html. Learning and developing XHTML in a text/html environment is a recipe for disaster. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards (was editor)
[Lori wrote] I am new to (trying to learn how) constructing standards conforming web pages using XHTML and would like to know what HTML editor you folks that are light years ahead of me would recommend? [Lachlan wrote] Since you're new, you might want to stick with HTML4 Lachlan, here is a classic example of a person new to Web Standards asking for a recommendation about which editor to use and instead you embroil this person in a debate over MIME types. Do you think this is a healthy environment for newcomers to learn about Web Standards? Why do you need to stir things up? Since you brought up MIME types and Hickson's article, let me say that you will get a lot more credibility for your argument if you stop referring to an article that is based on flawed assumptions. Regards, -Vlad http://xstandard.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards (was editor)
... Lachlan, here is a classic example of a person new to Web Standards asking for a recommendation about which editor to use and instead you embroil this person in a debate over MIME types. Do you think this is a healthy environment for newcomers to learn about Web Standards? Why do you need to stir things up? You know, I have tested those flawed assumptions and they appear to be true. What definitely looks like false statement is: ...because only XHTML Strict and 1.1 guarantee the clean separation of data from formatting, making them the clear choice whenever availability of data is an important factor. (from http://xstandard.com/page.asp?p=A4372B00-8D7F-4166-977C-64E5C4E3708Es=E638AEB0-ADC1-448B-9CE5-FB8AAE1FE55B#feature-xhtml-note) I guess td align=left headers=th056EAE64 valign=top (same source) adds credibility to the claim. You know, in old bad HTML I can just drop align=left part, because that's default behaviour, and use vertical-align: top instead of valign=top. Marketing is marketing, but lie adds no credibility either. Regards, Rimantas -- http://rimantas.com/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards (was editor)
Here is Hickson's reasoning as taken from http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml 1. Authors write XHTML that makes assumptions that are only valid for tag soup or HTML4 UAs, and not XHTML UAs, and send it as text/html. 2. Authors find everything works fine. 3. Time passes. 4. Author decides to send the same content as application/xhtml+xml, because it is, after all, XHTML. 5. Author finds site breaks horribly. 6. Author blames XHTML. [Rimantas wrote: You know, I have tested those flawed assumptions and they appear to be true.] So Rimantas, you have written invalid XHTML, served it as XML and then blamed XHTML because your Web site broke. If you had written invalid HTML 4 and some User Agents had not parsed it correctly, would you blame HTML 4? Wow, calling us liars because XHTML 1.1 has td align= valign= constructs speaks volumes about your character. As it happens, there is no other way to do arbitrary alignment in XHTML 1.1 other than using this construct without resorting to inline CSS, which is deprecated, or by using constructs that are no better like: td class=left top Regards, -Vlad http://xstandard.com Original Message From: Rimantas Liubertas Date: 12/2/2005 11:54 AM ... Lachlan, here is a classic example of a person new to Web Standards asking for a recommendation about which editor to use and instead you embroil this person in a debate over MIME types. Do you think this is a healthy environment for newcomers to learn about Web Standards? Why do you need to stir things up? You know, I have tested those flawed assumptions and they appear to be true. What definitely looks like false statement is: ...because only XHTML Strict and 1.1 guarantee the clean separation of data from formatting, making them the clear choice whenever availability of data is an important factor. (from http://xstandard.com/page.asp?p=A4372B00-8D7F-4166-977C-64E5C4E3708Es=E638AEB0-ADC1-448B-9CE5-FB8AAE1FE55B#feature-xhtml-note) I guess td align=left headers=th056EAE64 valign=top (same source) adds credibility to the claim. You know, in old bad HTML I can just drop align=left part, because that's default behaviour, and use vertical-align: top instead of valign=top. Marketing is marketing, but lie adds no credibility either. Regards, Rimantas -- http://rimantas.com/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards (was editor)
Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote: Lachlan Hunt wrote: Lori Cole wrote: I am new to (trying to learn how) constructing standards conforming web pages using XHTML and would like to know what HTML editor you folks that are light years ahead of me would recommend? Since you're new, you might want to stick with HTML4 Lachlan, here is a classic example of a person new to Web Standards asking for a recommendation about which editor to use and instead you embroil this person in a debate over MIME types. My original advice to Lori did not include anything about MIME types or any other technical issues, I merely advised him/her that XHTML was not widely supported that there's a lot to learn about XHTML before one can use it; both points are true and I would expect anyone to give such advice to a beginner, before they go off and learn XHTML wrongly. I only brought up all the technical issues in order to defend my position, and if I wasn't able to defend my position, I would have lost credibility. Do you think this is a healthy environment for newcomers to learn about Web Standards? Yes. Why should we attempt to hide the truth from them, especially when they're just starting out and they need to lose/avoid any bad habits and mistakes as quickly as possible. Since you brought up MIME types and Hickson's article, let me say that you will get a lot more credibility for your argument if you stop referring to an article that is based on flawed assumptions. The assumptions are not completely flawed, and while the conclusion that authors blame XHTML may not be true in all cases, substitute XHTML with browsers or anything else commonly blamed by incompetent authors other than themselves, and the rest of the assumptions still hold true. But those assumptions you quoted from the article are irrelevant to the accuracy of the technical arguments within it. It is the technical arguments you need to dispute, not some introductory prose. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards (was editor)
Lachlan Hunt wrote: Yes. Why should we attempt to hide the truth from them, especially when they're just starting out and they need to lose/avoid any bad habits and mistakes as quickly as possible. Yours is a fringe and pedantic opinion, and you're being ridiculously harsh on XHTML. I'm glad that people have been speaking up so that hopefully Lori will see that it's not so black and white an issue. .Matthew Cruickshank http://holloway.co.nz/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards (was editor)
2005/12/2, XStandard Vlad Alexander [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
So Rimantas, you have written invalid XHTML, served it as XML and then blamed
XHTML
because your Web site broke.
Your assumption is wrong :)
If you had written invalid HTML 4 and some User Agents had
not parsed it correctly, would you blame HTML 4?
No. And I do not blame XHTML. I don't like the selling of XHTML
without explaining exactly those
perils Hixie talks about.
Wow, calling us liars because XHTML 1.1 has td align= valign=
constructs speaks volumes about your character.
I call you liars because of this:
...because only XHTML Strict and 1.1 guarantee the clean separation
of data from formatting, making them the clear choice whenever
availability of data is an important factor.
This is a lie, plain and simple.
As it happens, there is no other way to do arbitrary alignment in
XHTML 1.1 other than using
this construct without resorting to inline CSS, which is deprecated, or by
using constructs
that are no better like:
td class=left top
I'd put it another way: no other way to do arbitrary alignment in
XHTML 1.1 generated by WYSIWYG tool.
Because:
1. Content of td is aligned to the left by default. No align=left
is necessary.
Content of th is centered by default.
In your case you used align=center to center images in some columns.
This can be done in external CSS file with one rule td img
{display:block; margin:auto}
2. Content in td by default is centered vertically. In most cases we
want it to be aligned to
the top, so single rule tr {vertical-align: top} takes care of all
valign=top attributes.
And if want to pollute your markup with these attributes, why not to
put them on tr, not each td?
3. If you have some cells which use different layout from the rest,
that means you have something
special in them. And this means you can have some id or class with
semantic, not presentational name. WYSIWYG tools are not smart enough
for that, but this is not the problem of (X)HTML and CSS.
All that means I can recode the page I referred in last post with
HTML4, and will have less and cleaner code than your XHTML1.1.
Recoding whole Notes section with dl and getting rid of all those
decorative img
would save a bunch too.
So, only XHTML Strict and 1.1 guarantee the clean separation of data
from formatting???
Language does not matter, how you use it matters.
Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rimantas.com/
**
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See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list getting help
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Re: [WSG] Newcomers and Web Standards (was editor)
Lachlan, you have been on this list long enough to know that when you make extreme statements such as since you're new, you might want to stick with HTML4 or IE does not support XHTML, that debate will ensue. This is not what newcomers to Web Standards need. A better approach would have been to ask why this person needs/wants to use XHTML and if he/she has a good reason to do so, give this person advice on how to do it right. To address your statement that IE does not support XHTML - this is not true. IE does support XHTML 1.0 - you and I just don't like the level of support IE offers. If you serve valid XHTML as HTML to IE, will there be any data loss? No! Will any modern assistive technology running on top of IE not be able to access the data? No! So, if XHTML is written to specification and to compatibility guidelines, IE will support XHTML. Now, I don't want to give Hickson any more of my attention. But I will say that he and his groupies are not interested in teaching people how to use XHTML correctly. They are far more interested in inventing HTML 5 that no one now or will ever support. Regards, -Vlad http://xstandard.com Original Message From: Lachlan Hunt Date: 12/2/2005 5:08 PM Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote: Lachlan Hunt wrote: Lori Cole wrote: I am new to (trying to learn how) constructing standards conforming web pages using XHTML and would like to know what HTML editor you folks that are light years ahead of me would recommend? Since you're new, you might want to stick with HTML4 Lachlan, here is a classic example of a person new to Web Standards asking for a recommendation about which editor to use and instead you embroil this person in a debate over MIME types. My original advice to Lori did not include anything about MIME types or any other technical issues, I merely advised him/her that XHTML was not widely supported that there's a lot to learn about XHTML before one can use it; both points are true and I would expect anyone to give such advice to a beginner, before they go off and learn XHTML wrongly. I only brought up all the technical issues in order to defend my position, and if I wasn't able to defend my position, I would have lost credibility. Do you think this is a healthy environment for newcomers to learn about Web Standards? Yes. Why should we attempt to hide the truth from them, especially when they're just starting out and they need to lose/avoid any bad habits and mistakes as quickly as possible. Since you brought up MIME types and Hickson's article, let me say that you will get a lot more credibility for your argument if you stop referring to an article that is based on flawed assumptions. The assumptions are not completely flawed, and while the conclusion that authors blame XHTML may not be true in all cases, substitute XHTML with browsers or anything else commonly blamed by incompetent authors other than themselves, and the rest of the assumptions still hold true. But those assumptions you quoted from the article are irrelevant to the accuracy of the technical arguments within it. It is the technical arguments you need to dispute, not some introductory prose. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
