Slashdot Mirror

The submitter mentioned cleaning lenses and other optical equipment. I want to comment that that's a very tricky thing. Most optical manuals just say: Do not attempt to clean!! Some recent developments are in the area of strip coatings (you pour a polymer over the surface and peel it off to remove dirt without damaging the optics). This has been tried since the early XX century but only recently has became practical. Here's a link to a group that developed a sucessful formula for that process: http://www.uwplatt.edu/~hamiltoj/

This has already been done, about two years ago. See http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot2/ and particularly http://www.uwplatt.edu/web/webstandards/slashdot.h tml

I'll bet most ad supported sites will continue to find a way to exist also.

I was just thinking about slashdot, for example. Would slashdot survive a subscription-only model? I highly doubt it. Slashdot is a conveniance for me, but not a necessity. If it were a cheap subscription, I would probably consider signing up, and certainly if everyone that views slashdot signed up, it could probably be extremely cheap.

Then I started thinking, why don't websites reduce their costs? Take bandwidth for example. There are ways slashdot could save a ton of bandwidth. According to this experiment from the Web Development office at the University of Washington Platteville, slashdot alone could save 14 gigs/day just by converting their almost-HTML3.2 layout into an XHTML/CSS2. That's quite a lot. Even at the (fairly low) price I pay for my bandwidth, that's $2100 per month.

Then I thought, why XHTML? Theoretically, you could make up a slim-and-trim XML schema and a CSS file to go with it and publish slashdot like that. Probably they could trim a little bit more, especially from the CSS file (not having to override standard XHTML formatting). Removing extraneous whitespace (tabs!) would save even more space, which would add up over time.

That being said, bandwidth is probably the least of slashdot's costs, but for other websites with even worse HTML (I can only assume there are some that exist), this may be an option as well. Also, replacing an image-heavy layout with a pure CSS/XHTML layout would save a lot more bandwidth than it would save slashdot.

When I see these sites laden with ads, I have to ask myself, why do they need these ads? Is it to pay for people's time, or is it because they have waste they don't even know about? Professional web developers can pay for themselves over time, deals can be struck with colocation providers (our provider normally charges twice what we pay, and most companies don't haggle with tech companies). Using W2K? That's another few hundred to few grand, plus tech support for an MCSE.

I know a lot of sites do need revenue for legitimate reasons - i.e. slashdot, which has people to pay for their time - but there's always waste that can be trimmed. Perhaps now's the time to start.

I bet part of it is that it's using tables extensively for its layout, instead of easier ways (easier for the browser, that is) like DIV+CSS.

If the right bar was "right: 16px; width: 150px" then we would know exactly where it goes. But since it's in a table, we might as well just let it be random until Slashdot fix it.

The stupid thing is that somebody already did all the work for them but they STILL don't fix it.

Slashdot's developers suck.

found it

Even when the slashdot bug has already been filed for Firefox, it won't be available until Firefox 1.1 (aw crap).

In other news, Slashdot would REALLY do Firefox users a favor if they implemented things like this (Main page here, article here).

I mean, isn't this what web developers have been saying for AGES? "It's NOT the browser, but the WEB DESIGNER'S FAULT!".

So, can somebody explain to me WHY /. won't fix their webpages to a CSS layout? I mean, look at what can be done with CSS! Look ma, no layout!

Even when the slashdot bug has already been filed for Firefox, it won't be available until Firefox 1.1 (aw crap).

In other news, Slashdot would REALLY do Firefox users a favor if they implemented things like this (Main page here, article here).

I mean, isn't this what web developers have been saying for AGES? "It's NOT the browser, but the WEB DESIGNER'S FAULT!".

So, can somebody explain to me WHY /. won't fix their webpages to a CSS layout? I mean, look at what can be done with CSS! Look ma, no layout!

Even when the slashdot bug has already been filed for Firefox, it won't be available until Firefox 1.1 (aw crap).

In other news, Slashdot would REALLY do Firefox users a favor if they implemented things like this (Main page here, article here).

I mean, isn't this what web developers have been saying for AGES? "It's NOT the browser, but the WEB DESIGNER'S FAULT!".

So, can somebody explain to me WHY /. won't fix their webpages to a CSS layout? I mean, look at what can be done with CSS! Look ma, no layout!

Even when the slashdot bug has already been filed for Firefox, it won't be available until Firefox 1.1 (aw crap).

In other news, Slashdot would REALLY do Firefox users a favor if they implemented things like this (Main page here, article here).

I mean, isn't this what web developers have been saying for AGES? "It's NOT the browser, but the WEB DESIGNER'S FAULT!".

So, can somebody explain to me WHY /. won't fix their webpages to a CSS layout? I mean, look at what can be done with CSS! Look ma, no layout!

Even when the slashdot bug has already been filed for Firefox, it won't be available until Firefox 1.1 (aw crap).

In other news, Slashdot would REALLY do Firefox users a favor if they implemented things like this (Main page here, article here).

I mean, isn't this what web developers have been saying for AGES? "It's NOT the browser, but the WEB DESIGNER'S FAULT!".

So, can somebody explain to me WHY /. won't fix their webpages to a CSS layout? I mean, look at what can be done with CSS! Look ma, no layout!

Yes, but A List Apart did just the front page. I can think of the preferences, user pages, this post form, the FAQ, topics section, submit story form, hall of fame, user login/logout, and all the other misc. pages around the place. Admittedly I haven't taken a look at the code, so what you say it promising.

And the makeover is extremely impressive :)

An easier wish might be "Slashdot updates its HTML for 2001."

A while ago, somebody already worked out how it should look like, i.e. what the XHTML output [view source] could/should be.

So, is this going to be implemented in Slashcode?

Check it out at http://www.uwplatt.edu/web/webstandards/slashdot.h tml

Hmm, a language without "I" or "no". Sounds like Japanese to me...

When will /. be getting a well needed HTML upgrade to XHTML 1.0 or 1.1? And have it fully validate?! I mean for crying out loud someone on alistapart.com did an article and rewrote slashdot as a completely standard website.. see the article and read more about it here

Look at the savings in bandwidth he calculated out.

"Most Slashdot visitors would have the CSS file cached, so we could ballpark the daily savings at ~10 GB bandwidth. A high volume of bandwidth from an ISP could be anywhere from $1 - $5 cost per GB of transfer, but let's calculate it at $1 per GB for an entire year. For this example, the total savings for Slashdot would be: $3650! All of that for just a couple of KB."

Here: copy of the page and final example. The extended version has it too (towards the bottom of the page). The author thought it might be more convenient to zip the whole thing up, but it's available as links too.

This is the most interesting claim:

Most Slashdot visitors would have the CSS file cached, so we could ballpark the daily savings at ~10 GB bandwidth. A high volume of bandwidth from an ISP could be anywhere from $1 - $5 cost per GB of transfer, but let's calculate it at $1 per GB for an entire year. For this example, the total savings for Slashdot would be: $3650! All of that for just a couple of KB.

Yes, it IS a bug, but go read the Bugzilla write-up posted above. It's a bug in table layouts. While it should be fixed, I suspect that if Slashdot were to use valid, standard markup instead of table mangling, Mozilla would render it fine.

Check out the Slashdot Web Standards Example.

Why would you ever be hired with that attitude? The fact is, all the IE moaning is a BIG MYTH.

While I agree with you that one has to make pages work with IE; allow me to say that you are talking out of your ass.

My sites always have the proper DOCTYPE, they have to in order to validate (I validate all pages prior to posting). Sometimes _having_ a doctype makes IE show new bugs.

Frankly, unless you're building some fancy site with the absolute latest CSS and Javascript features, IE will render your page *just fine*.

Your sites are obviously _very_ basic with minimal design. The moment you pass into medium complexity you start running into problems. I don't use any Javascript.

Yet, why exactly do you need to be using 32-bit images on your page? It's quite easy (and beneficial for download speeds) to get by with 8-bit images.

We need 32 bit images in order to have variable alpha. If you don't have variable alpha, then you can't have any image without including the background it's going to be over.

Including the background in your image completely negates the advantage of declaring colors in the CSS. Normally I could change the background of my site by changing one line, now I have to change all images as well.

There's other reasons why you might want a variable alpha, say to have transparent graphics or windows (the navigation on the left). Which are not heavy as the image is just 2 x 2 pixels and weighs in at a hundred bytes or so. In fact there are tons of creative uses that people haven't even thought of.

and tell me why they play such an integral part of your development process that you cannot find a way around them.

You're missing the point entirely. The idea is to allow the designer do her thing (so I can get a beautiful unique website) and then translate that to CSS, compromising wherever needed; not just half-assedly add some design to a text document.

However, when one tries to do anything remotely interesting, Explorer completely dies on you.

The best solution I found so far is using IE conditionals and serving IE a different and sometimes strange CSS file. In the end I usually figure it out reasonably, but it takes ridiculous amounts of effort and the site is never as good as it's Safari/ Mozilla /Opera counterpart.

If you want an example you can look at my current site (I linked it above too), I've only starting the IE fixing, you can see the ugly IE file with filters: and other weird junk so that PNGs show up with alpha: here. So far it's taking a serious effort and even when finished won't look as well anyway. Look at it under both IE and then Firefox.

As others have pointed out before me, there is quite a lot of bandwidth to be saved for Slashdot to switch over to a CSS based web. The content will be MORE ACCESSIBLE TO OTHER DEVICES. It'll actually have a better chance of getting validated as anything. Right now it doesn't even rank good enough to validate as HTML 3.2*.

Why do you consider CSS "god-awful" as you put it? Is it because you can't grok it, or are you the type that would prefer a compiler that assumes when statements end and puts in its own end-of-statement marker instead of doing the right thing and bitch about it in the compiler output?

*It would appear that the powers that be here on Slashdot aren't too happy with people trying to validate the site as the W3c validator received a HTTP 403, Denied from slashdot.org

I showed my wife (a non-techie) alternate layout page as I explained it to her and commented "oh, just like Livejournal."

They allow paying users to choose their own skins for their journal, and paying users even get to write their own stylesheets (albeit in the GNU S2 script, not CSS).

I bet if Slashdot offered some features like this they might get a few more subscribers.

http://www.uwplatt.edu/~web/webstandards/slashdot/ INDEX2.HTML

I actually like the look of Slashdot here. Others have said that it looks terrible but I actually like it! I hope Slashdot is revamped and cleaned up, and I especially hope that we have the opportunity to choose whatever CSS we want - so I can get it to look like that.

Would Slashdot itself actually have to be totally shut down in order to revamp it, or is it just a matter of modifying the Slashcode and restarting the Web server?

How about this for the original and then this for the result and also have a look at this for an alternative

How about this for the original and then this for the result and also have a look at this for an alternative

How about this for the original and then this for the result and also have a look at this for an alternative

At the risk of being redundant, this is a good move. For those who are earnestly looking, there is an online sample available. In my quick experience the page rendered a bit quicker on Safari.

I dual boot debian as well with XP. I have no issues at all. I just set Windows XP as one of my LILO options. Works like a charm.

Want to know how I did it? email me: Sean Dudley