Slashdot Mirror

and Slashdot begins using CSS

Go to Slashcode in Firefox and and do View, Page Style, Slashdot. Not one single table tag! The top article there says it's coming soon.

http://www.slashcode.com/ is using iso-8859-1 for character encoding. Why not go with unicode like utf-8? It's kind of a big deal for people who use different languages.

it does not validate[1] -- you've got 2 typos:

line 242: "#adminfooter label , #adminfooter legend,{". remove the comma
at the end of the selector, and then line 488: "#usermenu ul.menu
a.end... padding: 5px 11px 0 0 2px;". you've got 5 values for the
padding property. it only takes 4 (for top, right, bottom and left,
respectively).

other suggestions:

- use descriptive names for classes. i'm seeing things like: #misc,
#frame and it's hard to remember what you're styling when you've
labelled it in a rush and just given it a placeholder for a name. other
class names are bound to locations (like #topnav) which is meta-semantic
rather than semantic and confusing since it's easy enough to decide to
css position it elsewhere and then you're going to have to change the
code again. (the point of css is to separate content from
presentation, so take the presentation out of your class names/ids and
leave it up to the css properties.) also, there are known quirk issues
with underscores in class names, eg your: #index_qlinks-content. rather
use hypens.

- for screen media, use a default font of sans-serif (you're using
serif). sans-serif is proven easier on the eye on low resolution devices
(like your monitor).

- when specifying a colour, you're encouraged to always provide both
foreground and background colours in the same css rule, as it's often
not obvious what the cascade will do and you can easily end up with
illegible text. for example, at least replace your:

a { color: #066; }

with:

a { color: #066; background-color: inherit; }

- you're using a mixture of css unit measurements. if you want text to
resize and print easier, try replacing the pixel (px) measurements with
ems or percentages (aka fluid layout). or provide a print stylesheet.

- i'm not sure on this[2], but apparently most elements do not have
intrinsic width and when you float something you should give it a width
even if it's just a width:auto.

- p

--
1.
W3C CSS Validator results for http://www.slashcode.com/slashdot.css
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=h ttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashcode.com%2Fslashdot.css&userm edium=all

2.
Visual formatting model
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#floats

Yeah, it appears so.

About 1/5th of my requests actually make it to load a page.

Then I notice things like text overlapping the icons at http://www.slashcode.com/comments.pl

I couldn't really do a valid comparison since I couldn't get it to list any stories or anything.

Newsflash: Slashdot slashdots Slashcode. I get a 404 for http://www.slashcode.com/.

Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), RSS doesn't honor your "homepage" preferences. Maybe when the slashcode developers get some time away from their day jobs they can add in that feature!

The code can be found here. Go scratch your itch.

I really don't understand why dupes really get under people's skin so much. I mean yeah its a minor inconvenience when youre sitting there jonesing after an hour and compulsively hitting refresh waiting for that next story, and youve already read it, but.... Remember. Slashcode (http://www.slashcode.com/) is open source. This is an open source community. If it really gets to you so damn bad, add a feature to slashcode that works so well that all the editor has to do is click a button that says "check for dupes!" and poof it finds all the likely dupes.

Anything less, and youre really just being a hypocrite imho. Do it, and you will forever have slashdot bragging rights that you saved the dupes.

erm... you have access to the source code... if you don't like what it does, then make your own fork... until then, quit yer whingeing.

Well, erm... you have access to the code... if you don't like the "whingeing" here, then make your own site...

Oh wait, that isn't very helpful, is it? Can't quite understand how the parent was modded Insightful, when he's just repeating the same tired line that's been heard so many times before.

I'm very interested in anyone's experience with Slashcode, as well.

--
If you support dishonest and violence, don't say you are Christian.

Probably because slashcode has years of cruft and mixed presentation and login built into it. Not to take anything away from the AListApart guys -- I think they did a great job -- but they're working with a static, already-generated page. That's orders of magnitude easier than rewriting an application with HTML tags scattered all through it.

That said, Slashcode is using the new templates and it's a testing ground for stuff that is coming to this site. CmdrTaco spoke at Linuxworld about the upcoming conversion which should be happening Real Soon Now.

I notice slashcode seems to have done away with table layout, on the main page anyway.

http://slashcode.com/
Whoa!

Not only that, but if you check out the opensource site of slashdot's code... http://www.slashcode.com/
If you view the source, there isn't a single table tag, it's all CSS (the main page, however comment pages, etc, have some tables). So, despite slashdot's appearance, I'm guessing the newer implementations based off the code are CSS anyways.

They've been working on it for a while and you can preview it at SlashCode.

Slashdot is going for HTML 4.01 and CSS conformity in the upcoming weeks, so this tried and true joke won't last much longer. Check Slashcode to see what they've updated.

If you don't like the editing here, you are free to start your own site. Here is the source.

Let us all know when it's up and running so we can all talk about what a crappy job you've done.

To be honest its the first one that has really impressed me. I looked at slashcode, scoop, zope, plone, postnuke, mambo.

When I started using drupal I got the same feeling as when I started using Mac OS X. To continue the OS analogy postnuke and phpnuke are more like windows whereas zope and plone are kinda linux of the CMS world.

That's retarded. There's nothing wrong with my HTML, so if some MOD somewhere could fix that I would appreceiate it.

Moderators can't edit posts, they can only mod them up or down as needed. I'm sure Slashdot editors/admins can, but this is the only time I've heard of them intervening, and that was to delete, not edit.

The problem here is that Slash, the code behind Slashdot and several other sites, uses very old HTML, before such things as title attributes were around. You could try reporting a bug, if there isn't one already, but realistically all you can do is stick to very basic HTML here and make sure you preview before submitting.

Bias of Slashdot editors is a time-proven fact. Which is okay in the overall scheme of things--it is their website, after all.

Nonetheless, as a service to those with an interest, I offer the following (which the editors chose not to post):

11 May 2005: Bruce Perens, owner of Technocrat.net, a site based on the Slashdot model and running the same open source Slashcode http://www.slashcode.com/, has shut down the site, citing declining readership and lower than expected growth. Sometimes touted as "a more mature Slashdot," the site carried news and discussion on topics ranging from politics to technology, and many involving biological sciences. This blog article http://bre.klaki.net/dagbok/faerslur/978545404.sht ml suggests Perens might be making a mistake shutting down the site because syndication offerings through RSS feeds and other technology obscure the actual number of readers. The article contains more info and a letter to Perens about the shutdown. On a side note, as of this posting Perens' personal website http://www.perens.com/ was inaccessible.

KDE Dot also runs on Slashcode

ill-informed. Do you read any of the slashcode lists? (slashcode-general@lists.sourceforge.net)

• 
  
  From: Rob Malda
  To: slashcode-general@lists.sourceforge.net
  Cc: Wes Moran
  Subject: [Slashcode-general] CSS Slashdot/Slashcode mockups
  Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:09:13 -0500 (Tue, 09:09 EST)
  Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619.2)
  
  ... OSTGs resident HTML uber geek has finally been freed up to
  spend some time working on bringing Slashdot's HTML into this century.
  He gave me permission to share where he is with you guys. ...
  

What about installing slash?. If you did you would see that improvements are being made though slashcode.

Okay, let's see...

Livejournal runs on mySQL (with memcached), and has had 970k users update their LJs in the past week. Assume that on average, each journal gets 10 views in that one week (it's probably higher, as there are some really large communities). That's 9.7 million page views in a week, or ~ 40 million a month. Plus the people who just browse and don't have an account.

Slashdot itself uses mySQL..I have no clue about the pageviews, though I know it's in the millions a month.

Google is a mySQL customer. As is Dow Jones, the people that publish the Wall Street Journal and its online editions. So is the NYSE, NASA, the US Census Bureau, everyone's beloved AOL, the Associated Press, Texas Instruments, among plenty others.

Just because mySQL doesn't work for your project doesn't mean it doesn't for others. Not to mention that it's free and ships with almost every major Linux distro out there.

dunno, try it

Actually, a CSS redesign of Slashdot has been offered, although there would be lots of heavy lifting to get it into slashcode. This part 2 of an article on /. redesign shows how /. renders on a mobile device currently (well, at least when the article was written), and how a CSS version would gracefully degrade in a portable browser.

(Part 1)

Why does everybody use the stupid "Hello World" example to "demonstrate" how "inferior" java is? Real Java Projects are lot more than repeated calls to System.out.println()

Try reading the code of a major web site written in perl vs. one in java that uses Tag Libraries (JSP+Struts, JSF, Tapestry, etc) and you will see what I'm talking about!

PS - Ever heard of "auto-completion?"

It is a mockup

In my experience, when a client asks for a mockup, you provide him with a Photoshopped image of what the proposed design changes might look like. That is a mockup. If the client okays it, you move on to drafting the code. Maybe your experience is different.

Since the CSS page I linked to includes a valid CSS stylesheet and template, I'd say it's not proper to refer to it as a mockup. It contains some working code, although admittedly not all the code you would need.

Others have already implemented CSS enabled Slash themes. This was the sort of thing I was referring to when I wrote earlier that only a few hours of work stood between the HTML 3.2 pages we see today and a CSSified Slashdot.

Looking a little deeper, these patches rely on hacks that wouldn't be appropriate in a production environment as harsh as Slashdot's, but the fact remains that the owners of Slashdot really haven't made modern web standards or user experience a priority. And they should.

Umm, that's a static mockup. You do know there is a difference between a mockup and something that actually works don't you?

Sigh. It's not a "mockup". It is actual code that renders on a browser. Yes, I acknowledge it's not a full, ready-to-implement patch, but there's nothing being done with CSS that isn't already being done in a more laborious way with tables, so your intimation that moving to CSS is going to hurt Slashdot in the speed department just isn't supported.

25 million browsers (including mine) are still unable to properly render Slashdot.

That's not Mozilla's problem. Slashdot's markup is atrocious, really shamefully and embarassingly bad. It's for the Slashcode team to fix the problem, not for the Mozilla team. And it's pretty shameful that they don't. The fact that Slashdot explicitly blocks the W3C validator proves they know this.

&

&

Go ahead:
http://www.slashcode.com/

What version of code does Slashdot run? I see that they recently updated the SlashCode site Why doesn't CmdrTacoBell use better and newer code?

...duh!

They only fixed the resultant HTML, not the underlyng slashcode, which is what the OP is talking about.

Well, there is of course slashcode, and Amazon.com also uses mod_perl and HTML::Mason (see http://www.masonhq.com/?AmazonDotCom/). I'm sure there are many others as well.

There has been a major security issue with Slashcode revealed this week. See http://www.slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/20/1 946225. I hope today's Slashdot troubles are not related to this...

Lookit here - slashdot.org

Unless, they do a very elaborate setup whereas it is actually WinNT but presenting it as *nix.. It can be done you know..

But if it is running IIS, somehow or rather, I doubt slashcode can be run on IIS with ActivePerl, stably I mean..

Regards

Lookit here - slashdot.org

Unless, they do a very elaborate setup whereas it is actually WinNT but presenting it as *nix.. It can be done you know..

But if it is running IIS, somehow or rather, I doubt slashcode can be run on IIS with ActivePerl, stably I mean..

Regards

http://www.slashcode.com/

Give some proof. I've never heard of this.

http://slashcode.com/

Get the code and search for:

"Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet"

Also, google for that phrase.

This also happened to me and I am a subscriber, and have a pretty clean posting record and my karma has been labeled as "excellent" for years. I don't remember it ever not being "excellent".

It could have been someone else on my subnet, but I don't know. I almost ditched slashdot for good after that. It pissed me off pretty bad.

If you want to take a look at some code that's a real mess, try this code here.

Ugh.

Every time I see an obfuscated code contest, I wonder if 'Winner' is the right word to describe the victor ;)

Talk about obfuscated code, or do a View Source on any slashdot page to see the shit HTML spewed forth by this, ahem, CMS.

Looks someone tried to create a standards compliant theme, in 2002. I haven't really investigated much to see where they finally got to, but looking at one of the comments make me wonder what the oldest browser /. should work in?

Looks someone tried to create a standards compliant theme, in 2002. I haven't really investigated much to see where they finally got to, but looking at one of the comments make me wonder what the oldest browser /. should work in?

Wow... the irony. Slashdot is talking about standards. Isn't it about time that /. itself should be standards compliant?

Is this a /. specific issue, or a Slashcode issue (slashdot is implemented using slashcode)? If it is the latter maybe a branch needs to be created to work on making a standards compliant version.

Some parts of the slashcode are pretty easy to understand. For example, I patched it so that Underrated and Overrated would get caught in moderation. (But that's a feature that they want to keep. Despite new users filing it as a bug every three months.)

Slashcode

Slash's main advantage is its security. There may be security bugs in Slash, but the last one we found in a major release was over two years ago. Of course the last major release we had was three years ago, so maybe that's not saying much. Seriously, we're good about security: we know where the pitfalls are and we write code with a careful eye for them.

Slash's second advantage is speed (we cache aggressively, write .shtml files, and are integrated with MySQL replication and memcached). It's optimized for heavy discussion if you're expecting that, including lots of tools to fend off hostile users, but it works OK for just posting periodic stories. Slash's major disadvantage is that you (effectively) need root to install it, and it's a real pain to customize its look and feel (mostly because it's so powerfully configurable; we hope to make customization easier in the months to come).

(Interestingly, Slash fell prey to a similar attack almost a year ago; our code, however, was not trojaned.)

If you're just looking for software to post entries to a blog or something, though, you should probably look elsewhere :)

Slash's main advantage is its security. There may be security bugs in Slash, but the last one we found in a major release was over two years ago. Of course the last major release we had was three years ago, so maybe that's not saying much. Seriously, we're good about security: we know where the pitfalls are and we write code with a careful eye for them.

Slash's second advantage is speed (we cache aggressively, write .shtml files, and are integrated with MySQL replication and memcached). It's optimized for heavy discussion if you're expecting that, including lots of tools to fend off hostile users, but it works OK for just posting periodic stories. Slash's major disadvantage is that you (effectively) need root to install it, and it's a real pain to customize its look and feel (mostly because it's so powerfully configurable; we hope to make customization easier in the months to come).

(Interestingly, Slash fell prey to a similar attack almost a year ago; our code, however, was not trojaned.)

If you're just looking for software to post entries to a blog or something, though, you should probably look elsewhere :)

Slashcode uses Template Toolkit, which is quite a flexible (and separate) templating system written in Perl. Anyone who knows template toolkit could theoretically create a new slashdot theme and submit it. The garish section themes are created by swapping out a few of the template elements and introducing others in their place.

I don't know about how jumbled the perl and SQL are, but the template stuff's pretty divorced from the rest. See the Slashcode site, for example.

From the page linked on you sig :
------------
Before you panic because I'm picking on Slashdot, let me inform you that I asked Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, the guru behind Slashdot, for permission to post this information, and he stated in his reply email:
Have fun. Feel free to submit patches back to us if you come up with anything useful. Slashdot's source code is open source and available at http://www.slashcode.com.
------------
Did you or anyone else involved with alistapart submit a patch to the slashcode? I'd love a 2004-compliant /.!
Now, we only need some frequent ./ posters to link the alistapart site. Let's begin lobbying Taco right now! Who's with me? :-)