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from the w3 OWL page

"...a web ontology language. An ontology formally defines a common set of terms that are used to describe and represent a domain. Ontologies can be used by automated tools to power advanced services such as more accurate web search, intelligent software agents and knowledge management."

I know exactly why nobody uses XML and everyone uses PDF.

XML has absolutely NO software support. I can painstakingly write this great XML file by hand, using either a long, complex Tutorial which I can hopefully bend to my needs, or by reading the several pages of specification packed with technical garbage. Fine. Now what the fuck do I view it in? What do my recipients view it in?

On the other hand, to create a PDF, I can create the content with my application of choice and print to a PDF distiller (of which there's a bunch of free ones, mostly relying on GhostScript). A PDF viewer is already installed on almost every user's machine, and are available in any size (from minimal to bloated) for any platform.

When XML becomes just as easy to use (create document, export / print, e-mail) then it has a small, tiny chance to become relevant in the document space.

If only there was some kind of extensible document format that let people have it be both printable and viewable on a monitor! We'd have to let the style sheets cascade, but then we could even support things like text-to-speech from the same document meant for printing and viewing! Hey, why stop there, why not make it a markup language so that we can add other neat features, like hyper links!

Wow, though, that's a lot of standards work. We might need a standards body to oversee it. Maybe someday, people will start to encode information in this format so that we can view it comfortable on our monitors without fucking around with stupid documents.

  -=-

Sarcasm aside, it's totally not a technology issue -- it's a people issue. PDF has its place in forms you want printed off, because it currently has momentum. I have no idea why people resist using the alternate solutions which have added benefits beyond the PDF momentum.
    Bug the people who put up PDFs for use. People using PDFs where they should be using XML is lot like people using Shockwave flash where they should be using XML.

If only there was some kind of extensible document format that let people have it be both printable and viewable on a monitor! We'd have to let the style sheets cascade, but then we could even support things like text-to-speech from the same document meant for printing and viewing! Hey, why stop there, why not make it a markup language so that we can add other neat features, like hyper links!

Wow, though, that's a lot of standards work. We might need a standards body to oversee it. Maybe someday, people will start to encode information in this format so that we can view it comfortable on our monitors without fucking around with stupid documents.

  -=-

Sarcasm aside, it's totally not a technology issue -- it's a people issue. PDF has its place in forms you want printed off, because it currently has momentum. I have no idea why people resist using the alternate solutions which have added benefits beyond the PDF momentum.
    Bug the people who put up PDFs for use. People using PDFs where they should be using XML is lot like people using Shockwave flash where they should be using XML.

If only there was some kind of extensible document format that let people have it be both printable and viewable on a monitor! We'd have to let the style sheets cascade, but then we could even support things like text-to-speech from the same document meant for printing and viewing! Hey, why stop there, why not make it a markup language so that we can add other neat features, like hyper links!

Wow, though, that's a lot of standards work. We might need a standards body to oversee it. Maybe someday, people will start to encode information in this format so that we can view it comfortable on our monitors without fucking around with stupid documents.

  -=-

Sarcasm aside, it's totally not a technology issue -- it's a people issue. PDF has its place in forms you want printed off, because it currently has momentum. I have no idea why people resist using the alternate solutions which have added benefits beyond the PDF momentum.
    Bug the people who put up PDFs for use. People using PDFs where they should be using XML is lot like people using Shockwave flash where they should be using XML.

If only there was some kind of extensible document format that let people have it be both printable and viewable on a monitor! We'd have to let the style sheets cascade, but then we could even support things like text-to-speech from the same document meant for printing and viewing! Hey, why stop there, why not make it a markup language so that we can add other neat features, like hyper links!

Wow, though, that's a lot of standards work. We might need a standards body to oversee it. Maybe someday, people will start to encode information in this format so that we can view it comfortable on our monitors without fucking around with stupid documents.

  -=-

Sarcasm aside, it's totally not a technology issue -- it's a people issue. PDF has its place in forms you want printed off, because it currently has momentum. I have no idea why people resist using the alternate solutions which have added benefits beyond the PDF momentum.
    Bug the people who put up PDFs for use. People using PDFs where they should be using XML is lot like people using Shockwave flash where they should be using XML.

The US built something, everyone is using it, everyone wants it and the UN thinks they have a valid reason to have it.

Note: Not once has anyone offered to compensate the US for its contributions.

Furthermore, thanks for the feedback I now see that the ITU has absolutely nothing
to do with the Internet. Telcom yes, radio waves yes, however, not Internet... Yet.
I notice that they are trying to get into that sector. Just because they have a few
links on their website that relates to Internet subjects does not classify this as an
Internet governing body. (see http://www.w3.org/ ) Many organizations
have recommendations about safe use of the internet, very few are actually making
any real improvements.

Nothing to see here!

In other news: lighting strikes the equator and splits the world in two.

Didn't they change their metrics a couple months ago to favor IE?

"Finite number of Microsoft haters" translates to "people who have used something else and/or read any web standards.

When OneStat agrees with this drivel, I might buy it.

...with few people even remembering that OSI was supposed to be a competitor to TCP and built along fundamentally different assumptions ...
The problem is compounded by broken requirements like knowing the OSI model which is not only dead but broken.

I'll bite.

Why does the fact TCP and OSI were once competitors matter in modern discourse? Further, what is more dead and broken about the OSI 7 layer model versus the DoD 4 layer model? Finally, how exactly are the basic assumptions of OSI and TCP so different? (The prioritization of goals may be somewhat different, interoperability versus reliability for instance, but I don't see how the basic problem spaces differ so extremely.)

I certainly hope you're not arguing against layering of protocols altogether.

there have been svg browser plugins for some time; now native svg is included with firefox on ms-windows, and scheduled for inclusion with firefox and mozilla. here are some SVG and SVG animation links for you:

• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification - w3c 2003
• Mozilla SVG Project
• SVG Animation Tutorial - dated 2002, i'm sure you can find something more recent

Standards-wise there needs to be a screen-reader stylesheet, so those programs can be more beneficial to their users.

Already done. Right now, only Opera and Emacspeak have even the slightest clue about aural CSS, but it's been sitting there ready to be implemented for years. JAWS etc haven't a clue about W3C specifications though.

<< there needs to be a screen-reader stylesheet, so those programs can be more beneficial to their users

It would be nice if more than a handful of screenreaders supported the aural media type. Unfortunately, screen readers lean toward the screen media type (go figure) so support for this won't come for a while.

Although, I do agree -- a bit more work could be done to make the reading flow a bit more.

The correct mime type for XHTML is application/xhtml+xml. Parsers should also recognize the generic XML mime-types: application/xml and text/xml.

An empty file might do the trick as this should make your browser use it's default fonts and colours etc.

Are you sure about that?!

How to get slashdot/your browser to use your css file instead of the default one defined in the HTML might be a little trickier... Anyone got any ideas?

Yeah. Use opera, it's free now.

Press: Alt + P, Advanced, Content, Style options...

Then when browsing, hit Shift + G formerly Ctrl + G. (Or hit the glasses and/or the Document button.)

In Fire Fox you have to use the Web Developer Extension, disable styles, the add style.

IE is options Accessibility or something, but it just cascades and you have to add ! important and override all the stylesheet declaration:

body,td,* {color:black;background:white;}

I'm not going to waste my time.

The only browser that gets this right is Opera.

-l

I got the following unexpected response when trying to retrieve http://slashdot.org/> :

403 Forbidden

Curiously, the new code allows you to use some character entities in HTML comments, (¦©¼ÏÐ, so there!) but many are still filtered out. It's nice that I can now use a nice em dash instead of a tawdry double-hyphen — but why can't I use a Greek letter if I really need to?

@-moz-document domain(slashdot.org)
{
/* CSS rules here apply to:
    Any page whose URL's host is slashdot.org or ends with .slashdot.org
  */
}

Well, now we've got slashdot on board. Whose going to tell Don Knuth?

You can then see whether the /. frontpage validates. As others have pointed out in this thread, it doesn't strictly comply.

HTML 4.01 was released on December 24, 1999, so they're not quite here yet...

and Pudge for writing the code to convert 900k users, 60k stories, and 13 million comments to comply

Huh? By doing what, running them through HTMLTidy? Oh, the horror! What sort of "conversion" is required on the data, when we're just talking about changing the presentation layer?

Look, this conversion was done by A List Apart nearly two years ago. I'm not impressed. And don't give me some crap about how it's hard for Slashdot to change its code, because it's such a high-traffic site. Slashdot is miniscule compared to Wikipedia, (which runs entirely off donated hardware, to boot). If a bunch of volunteers at Wikipedia can write code which serves up validating HTML (and does a hell of a lot more complex work than Slashcode does), why did it take the well-paid proprietors of Slashdot two years to get there, when someone had already done the hard work for them?

Perhaps they're too busy posting dupes, abusing the moderation system and otherwise being petty emperors of their ever-shrinking (see above graph) realm?

At least Jon Katz has faded into well-deserved obscurity. "In our post-Katrina world, blah blah blah..."

I clearly have opening tags for my <A> tags. Otherwise how would the links work?

When in doubt, don't assume the bug is somebody else's fault unless you understand what's going on.

HTML, as you know, lets you omit the delimiting quotes for attribute values sometimes. For example, type=text is valid. However, just because you can omit them sometimes, it doesn't mean you can always omit them. Your page contains the following code:

<a href=http://libtomcrypt.org/libtom.jpg><img border=0 width=410 height=120 src=http://libtomcrypt.org/libtom2.jpg></a>

The validator is saying that you have a closing </a> tag when you don't have an open <a> element. That is correct - you already closed the <a> element.

See, in order to provide us with the shortcut of not having to specify attribute names for some purposes (e.g. <input disabled>), HTML uses an SGML feature known as SHORTTAG NET. However, that's not the only shortcut it provides. It also lets you write <foo>bar</foo> as <foo/bar/.

Of course, I've only heard of one or possibly two browsers that have ever implemented this, so I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of it. In any case, one of the consequences of this shortcut is that you can't use slashes in attribute values unless you quote them - otherwise the parser has no way of knowing whether you are closing the tag or not. So when you write:

<a href=http://...

That has exactly the same meaning as this:

<a href=http:></a>...

So, later on, when you try and close your <a> element, the validator rightly complains that there's no open <a> element to close.

If you actually find a real bug in the validator, then feel free to report it. If you had done this with the "bug" you are complaining about, then you would have found the answer to the problem a lot quicker.

It might be worth actually fixing this one, as I've seen some search engine bots trip over on similar things (XHTML-style empty meta elements in HTML documents, etc), so you might be preventing some search engine bots from indexing anything but the front page of your website.

Since HTML 4.01 strict and XHTML 1.0 Transitional are so close, only minor differences really, you could easily make Slashdot XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

Yeah, I was wondering why the story's titles after "Is AOL The Key to Microsoft 'Killing' Google?" had bigger fonts. Seems like a good upgrade after all.
There are a few warnings on the pages, though. You should try to validate them on w3c's validator, or this excelent extension for Firefox.
Anyway, kudos to you all.

Finally, I can use Amaya the only truly compliant browser to view /.! (Since Amaya is made by the W3C, it is, by definition, the standard.)

The HTML 4.01 specification was published in the 90s. As was CSS 1. As was CSS 2. So really, welcome to the 90s, Slashdot.

As far as the code goes, it looks pretty decent. It's a misuse of <strong> for the dept. lines though - they aren't meant to be strongly emphasised are they? It looks like somebody's gung-ho about replacing <b> with <strong> without understanding why.

The fonts look a little off in some places. Also, the font size is greatly reduced on the page where you view your latest comments. The font size I've configured in my browser is fine, there's no need to reduce it by a further 25%, thank you.

The HTML 4.01 specification was published in the 90s. As was CSS 1. As was CSS 2. So really, welcome to the 90s, Slashdot.

As far as the code goes, it looks pretty decent. It's a misuse of <strong> for the dept. lines though - they aren't meant to be strongly emphasised are they? It looks like somebody's gung-ho about replacing <b> with <strong> without understanding why.

The fonts look a little off in some places. Also, the font size is greatly reduced on the page where you view your latest comments. The font size I've configured in my browser is fine, there's no need to reduce it by a further 25%, thank you.

The HTML 4.01 specification was published in the 90s. As was CSS 1. As was CSS 2. So really, welcome to the 90s, Slashdot.

As far as the code goes, it looks pretty decent. It's a misuse of <strong> for the dept. lines though - they aren't meant to be strongly emphasised are they? It looks like somebody's gung-ho about replacing <b> with <strong> without understanding why.

The fonts look a little off in some places. Also, the font size is greatly reduced on the page where you view your latest comments. The font size I've configured in my browser is fine, there's no need to reduce it by a further 25%, thank you.

Fails at w3c. It still looks better and is way faster, so big ups to y'all.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flib tomcrypt.org&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctyp e=Inline

It isn't like w3c is exactly stable....

I clearly have opening tags for my <A> tags. Otherwise how would the links work?

Tom

While I congratulate the TECH site Slashdot for bringing its content into the realms of somewhat standardized code in a time when most sites have -- at last -- switched to Unicode compliance and XHTML (still a last century technology), I put the coffee in the throat when trying to validate the site:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsla shdot.org%2F

I got the following unexpected response when trying to retrieve http://slashdot.org/>:

403 Forbidden

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsla shdot.org%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&do ctype=Inline

Still, it's move in the right direction.

summary: "This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Strict!"

Sure, only 13 on the front page of /. (don't remember how much before) and they all seem relatively minor. Still, sure is better than what it was. Glad to see it. thng

Response from http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .slashdot.org%2F is:

Hmm.

Yes, huge improvement. Unfortunately, there are a few problems.

• It still does not validate.
• The CSS does validate, but it's full of warnings.
• It is just old, 1999 HTML.
• There remains a mix of presentational markup (try disabling CSS using something like the webdeveloper extension.
• Still not semantic.
• It is now completely unusable on hand-held devices.
• Lots of glitches remain.

I could go on, but we are not seeing a serious commitment to web standards here. Too bad they didn't follow the lead set by A List Apart.

Yes, huge improvement. Unfortunately, there are a few problems.

• It still does not validate.
• The CSS does validate, but it's full of warnings.
• It is just old, 1999 HTML.
• There remains a mix of presentational markup (try disabling CSS using something like the webdeveloper extension.
• Still not semantic.
• It is now completely unusable on hand-held devices.
• Lots of glitches remain.

I could go on, but we are not seeing a serious commitment to web standards here. Too bad they didn't follow the lead set by A List Apart.

Validator seems to work fine here. Looks like there are only a few errors (and a font tag, ewww), and they seem to be clustered in the freshmeat.com box.

Glad to see this has happened, but at the moment the code isn't currently valid. Like the new subtleties of the design, particularly the reply page.

Glad to see this has happened, but at the moment the code isn't currently valid. Like the new subtleties of the design, particularly the reply page.

I can't let this pass. The first free browser was WorldWideWeb in 1991 from none other than T. Berners-Lee himself.

Cello also predates Netscape.

I do some Web development and, while I'm not the ultimate Web Guru, some people actually pay me to do it. I don't follow security as closely as I should, perhaps, but this is about browser choice. And security is not the only factor to consider.

I have not invested in a subscription to MSDN. So, most of my references are either from books with strange animals on the covers or from the W3C recommendations.

I use my references and create a Web site for a client. Then I proceed to testing with Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, and IE. What I have found is that, in Firefox, Mozilla, and (most of the time) Netscape, it usually all works just as expected. In Opera, a few changes are required. In IE, however, it almost never works like it should.

To be completely fair, I have to say that none of the popular browsers seem to get the W3C recommendations right 100% of the time (but that might be me getting it wrong :)). Sometimes (rarely), I must admit, it even seems like IE's interpretation of the W3C recommendation makes more sense. However, after using all of the browsers I test with, and a few others, I have to say that I choose Firefox.

1) cursor: hand does not exist.

2) You can set any attribute via DOM

3) Yes you can, as standardized by DOM2

4) Please clarify

5) No. They implemented all of ECMAscript and most of DOM Level 2. Nothing was 'taken out', unless you assume MSIE as a standard.

1) cursor: hand does not exist.

2) You can set any attribute via DOM

3) Yes you can, as standardized by DOM2

4) Please clarify

5) No. They implemented all of ECMAscript and most of DOM Level 2. Nothing was 'taken out', unless you assume MSIE as a standard.

1) cursor: hand does not exist.

2) You can set any attribute via DOM

3) Yes you can, as standardized by DOM2

4) Please clarify

5) No. They implemented all of ECMAscript and most of DOM Level 2. Nothing was 'taken out', unless you assume MSIE as a standard.

The XML header isn't mandatory, at least for XML 1.0. The parent's post is fine.


[22] prolog ::= XMLDecl? Misc* (doctypedecl Misc*)?

source

It's what you should get, because that's what the designer specified.

I strongly disagree with this statement. The user should always have the final say. A stylesheet (or FONT tag, $deity forbid) is just a suggestion as to how the page is to be rendered. Accessibility is more important than aesthetics.

From the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines:

Ensure that the user can select preferred styles (e.g., colors, size of rendered text, and synthesized speech characteristics) from choices offered by the user agent. Allow the user to override author-specified styles and user agent default styles.

What should we think of this page (URL)? http://www.sun.com/emrkt/rejected/approved.html
I'm sure they never read this. That is not really good naming. Anyway...

Indeed, it isn't a big mistake at all. Yet it's easily caught by just running it through the free W3C HTML validation service, and it's very easily fixed once caught. Had they taken the care to make sure their website contains valid HTML code, then I would have considered using their service in the future. But I'm not sure if I will do so now.

They do, of course, have a more standards-compliant webpage than the PHP Nuke webpage (124 errors) or the Drupal webpage (7 errors).

Indeed, it isn't a big mistake at all. Yet it's easily caught by just running it through the free W3C HTML validation service, and it's very easily fixed once caught. Had they taken the care to make sure their website contains valid HTML code, then I would have considered using their service in the future. But I'm not sure if I will do so now.

They do, of course, have a more standards-compliant webpage than the PHP Nuke webpage (124 errors) or the Drupal webpage (7 errors).