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The original poster I'm debating with seems to think somehow that Word has problems doing mail merge, or produces substandard results.

Whatever. I'm responding to what you said, which was: "I don't even want to think about what kind of weird-ass javascipt or other hackery is needed to make web browsers print correctly on envelopes." That is a statement made from ignorance of which you have since been disabused. You have my permission to admit as much without retracting everything else you've said.

Can you point me to a site that does that?

I made no claims about any particular sites doing this. I only said that it would be easy. Do your own googling or read the CSS specification and implement it yourself. I'm not familiar with the Infoprint 1120 but if it's reasonably sane you could probably get a CSS application to print in the correct dimensions without much trouble.

I find that most CSS sites print very goofy, as if the browser was stripping the CSS before sending it to the printer.

That's because the browser is stripping the CSS before sending it to the printer. Style sheets are normally linked with media="screen" and I believe this is the default if no media attribute is specified. Using media="print" will make the rules in the specified style sheet apply only to printers and using media="screen, print" will make the rules apply to both the screen and printers. Try it. It's easy and if you're using a compliant browser it works.

There is an even more powerful argument than W3C WAI paired with the ADA. You'll also want to visit the Section 508 website. A quote:

In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities... The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. ' 794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others.

"YOU FAIL IT BIG TIME"...

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .mentallyretired.com%2F&charset=(detect+automatica lly)&doctype=Inline

Now what was that you were saying about semantic XHTML?

[p.s. whatch how he immediately goes in a panic to fix up his crappy markup and then reply with 'I don't know what you're talking about l00zer']

Here is a possible letter body that is less tendentious than that linked in the article.

--

Dear Copyright Office:

I am responding to your August 4 notice on Preregistration of Certain Unpublished Copyright Claims (37 CFR Part 202 [Docket No. RM 2005-9]), in which you ask whether potential preregistrants will unable or unwilling to use Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher with the new electronic form. I am one of an estimated 20% of browser users who does not use Internet Explorer.

I understand that the problem is that you will not be able to upgrade to Siebel 7.8 in time for the October 24 launch, and that Siebel 7.7 offers inadequate guarantees of multiple browser support. I understand that you plan to offer multiple browser support "in the future".

I commend your for developing an electronic form and allowing preregistration. However your announcement of this implementation limitation is worrisome for three reasons.

- You do not identify the source of the limitation. If the electronic form will be compliant with modern web standards (http://www.w3.org/) but will not have been fully tested with other browsers, that is a minor concern. In this case there is high likelihood that all modern browsers will work with the site. If on the other hand the electronic form will actively block other browsers or will contain IE specific code in violation of web standards, this is a larger concern.
- You do not explicitly address section 508 compliance, which as I understand it is a legal requirement upon the Copyright Office. http://www.section508.gov/ It is hard to understand how section 508 compliant website would be unusable with essentially any modern browser.
- You do not identify a time frame for removal of this limitation. If you will fix things in a few weeks, fewer users will be affected than if you will take a couple years.

Yeah about time too ... I mean, CSS has only been around for almost nine years ...

Yes, browsers change faster than the archived information. I'm tired of playing this "cat and mouse" game with browser updates causing one to reedit html files. The US Copyright Office should consider adopting html standards. If MS doesn't want to play along then they can't go screw themselves. Here's the standard I think they should use:

For reference:

XHTML 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition)

XHTML

If you can't create a website that works adeqautely with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.

If you understand how to correctly use html and css then your site should work with all properly written browsers. The parent is bang on the mark.

It's easy to use, light-weight, and I never have to doubt wether the author made a mistake or not. :-)

Well, actually... ;-)

I've not been paying as much attention to the browser wars as I once did. Does anyone know how WebCore (Safari) and Gecko (Firefox) compare in rendering CSS? I know that Safari supports the (completely awesome) text-shadow property whereas Firefox does not, but what are some other differences?

http://www.csszengarden.com/ http://www.alvit.de/handbook/ http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/basics/index.html http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/ http://www.cssvault.com/ http://glish.com/css/home.asp http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/index.h tml http://www.positioniseverything.net/ http://www.stylegala.com/

How on earth can they not list THE resource?

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/

I'm talking about the official specification, of course.

That's what I'm always using to look up attributes, values, etc. It's easy to use, light-weight, and I never have to doubt wether the author made a mistake or not. :-)

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.spreadfirefo x.com
A failed result is none too good for a browser that is supposed to be all about standards

While its possible that your state level government doesn't need to comply there are several laws and policies in the US that could possibly apply and at least would make people listen:

w3.org has the list at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/

Don't try to appear to be on a moral crusade against MS and IE. But hopefully once the lawyers sniff out that there could be potential hassles from building a website in a non-accessible/standards based manner the development process will be forced to change fairly quickly.

Are you saying that a webapp will somehow print envelopes for USPS mailing? I don't even want to think about what kind of weird-ass javascipt or other hackery is needed to make web browsers print correctly on envelopes.

Dude, I'm not sure how things work on your planet but here on earth most mail merges get printed on sticky labels of the sort they sell in 8.5 x 11 inch sheets at a place like Staples. These are then affixed to envelopes. Printing in the right dimensions from a decent web browser is easy to do using Cascading Style Sheets.

If you're still writing HTML with tables, I'd like to introduce you to my friend CSS.

It's called XHTML. Maybe you've heard of it.

I agree with the rest though...

http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

Ron

One program I've had luck with is the HTML Tidy program at http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/. It seems to clean up code (particularly from Word) quite a bit.

And it works pretty well... TIDY!!!

Frankly I didnt think much of this tool till I had to convert a LOT of pages where there was going to be a ton of cleanup by hand. In some cases it was easier to go back and get word to spit out ugly html and then let tidy fix that (if you can belive it). Best of all it is FREE and easy to use!!!

How about getting CSS 2.1 recommended sometime this decade? It's only been three years. At least Microsoft wouldn't be able to use the document status as a cop-out for not attempting to implement it. I'd rather you stick to promoting interoperability instead of social engineering; people won't turn out the way you want anyhow.

"However, the technology has not existed to allow software to search out and make sense of these disparate forms of data."

Surely the technology has been around for a while http://www.w3.org/RDF/? It's just that no-one is using it?

Ruby on Rails has some easy-to-use AJAX features mixed in for good measure. And Ruby as a language is pretty nifty.

Scalable Vector Graphics, whenever most browsers get around to supporting it (the spec is kind of complex/full-featured), will enable another round of cool stuff. Especially when you consider the XML can be slurped in the background using AJAX

Now if the browsers would only fix/clean up the mouse and keyboard event model (jscript/ecmascript abstraction layers only help so much) and finish CSS2 support, we REALLY might get some interesting things going... At that point you could have your drawing app and eat xml, too...

There were certain tags and technologies that (arguably) needed to be made or developed that netscape had to do

Element types. Not "tags".

but there were also W3C standards that Netscape blatantly ignored. For example the CSS standard was made prior to Netscape 4, but Netscape had notoriously poor support for it, while IE had CSS support (albeit very limited) back in version 3.

Get your facts straight. At the time Microsoft were implementing CSS, it wasn't a published W3C recommendation. And Netscape submitted their own stylesheet language, JSSS to the W3C too. Unfortunately for Netscape, the W3C rejected JSSS and published CSS as a recommendation. Netscape was left scrambling to support CSS at the last minute, and did it by transforming CSS to JSSS on the fly, which was understandably limited.

The kicker was that one of the reasons the W3C rejected JSSS was because it violated the Principle of Least Power, while CSS didn't. Once Netscape were out of the way, Microsoft went ahead and added their own proprietary extensions to CSS that also violated the principle of least power.

So, while Netscape do have a history of ignoring the W3C, they certainly tried to work with them in this instance, only to get steamrollered by Microsoft who saw it as an opportunity to get a lead over Netscape in the browser wars.

You may have answered my question, but I don't see it. Who decides that the W3C is "the formal standards body for the web?" We could just as easily put Microsoft, Apple, or Mozilla in that role. The only reason W3C defines the standards is that the browser manufacturers and content providers decide it does.

Is your complaint that XMLHttpRequest isn't documented? I argue that it is.

RSS has been through several revisions. Is 2.0 a "formal standard"? If so, what makes XMLHttpRequest different? If not, why not?

Everything on the Internet started as a de-facto standard, and the definition of "formal" depends on who you're talking to.

I argue that XMLHttpRequest is implemented consistently and widely enough that it can be considered a reliable standard. Heck, there's more major implementations of it than Load and Save.

...neither page passes the Validator. Don't forget though, that you can also add a column to start, if you want to make use of, say, your 1080p screen. Not so with "ig". Also, compare the 60 or so errors across all three versions with the 200 or so on Google's single page.

Besides, start 3's other address has a l33t edge.

...neither page passes the Validator. Don't forget though, that you can also add a column to start, if you want to make use of, say, your 1080p screen. Not so with "ig". Also, compare the 60 or so errors across all three versions with the 200 or so on Google's single page.

Besides, start 3's other address has a l33t edge.

...neither page passes the Validator. Don't forget though, that you can also add a column to start, if you want to make use of, say, your 1080p screen. Not so with "ig". Also, compare the 60 or so errors across all three versions with the 200 or so on Google's single page.

Besides, start 3's other address has a l33t edge.

...neither page passes the Validator. Don't forget though, that you can also add a column to start, if you want to make use of, say, your 1080p screen. Not so with "ig". Also, compare the 60 or so errors across all three versions with the 200 or so on Google's single page.

Besides, start 3's other address has a l33t edge.

...neither page passes the Validator. Don't forget though, that you can also add a column to start, if you want to make use of, say, your 1080p screen. Not so with "ig". Also, compare the 60 or so errors across all three versions with the 200 or so on Google's single page.

Besides, start 3's other address has a l33t edge.

...neither page passes the Validator. Don't forget though, that you can also add a column to start, if you want to make use of, say, your 1080p screen. Not so with "ig". Also, compare the 60 or so errors across all three versions with the 200 or so on Google's single page.

Besides, start 3's other address has a l33t edge.

Because GOOG is so much better.

Fucking zealot.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .google.com

Now shut the fuck up.

1. There is dynamic content on the page AND it works in Firefox.
   
2. If you click on the "Start" button in the upper left, they list Slashdot as a "staff pick" feed.
   
3. I know that I might be on some kind of illicit substance here, but if you click on the "we're hiring" link at the bottom... they use transparent PNG's!
   

Gee ok, so instead of Microsoft shoving changes down our throats, you all would rather become that which you despise and force your own preferences on people?
 
Look, a lot of people here might come off as a bunch of tech snobs proposing a geek purity testto web surfers. Heck, some of them have probably devolved to that because they're frustrated. Frustrated that when the shining pinnacle of geekdom not only spans the globe but touches the lives of everyday people, the Microsoft way of doing things makes what they say fall on deaf ears. Even if they're talking about what they built and how it should work.
 
Preferring the W3C's way of doing things to the Microsoft way of doing things isn't just a "Look I'm a real nerd" lodge pin. Compare 1) What people - the people who stayed up for days and weeks writing code so that you, I'm guessing, didn't have to - were hoping to accomplish in the 80's and early 90's, 2) The opening sentences of w3.org and 3)What Microsoft has done. One of these things is not like the other.

I just love when people talk crap about beta products, and say what amounts to OMG F1R3F0X0r is t3h STANDARD COMPL14NT!!1!one on the right hand, while they make crappily marked-up Web pages and Windows altar sites on the left.

Sure, Fx, Opera, and perhaps even Lynx, Links and ELinks are more on the ball with standards than Grandpa IE, but it helps when we give then standard Web sites to comply with. I hope that Thurrott, the guys at Slashdot, and anyone planning to write Web pages are noticing what the Validator thinks of them. Between the browsers and parsers of the Web, it is easily the most standards-compliant of all.

I wish it came with a reference renderer though, that would make PNG page images from valid HTML, according to common screen sizes and print page dimensions.

They're so sure that they adhere to the standards they've blocked the w3c validator from validating their page.

That's ok. I saved the main page and uploaded it to the validator. Only 86 errors... no biggie...

• No browser sniffing. This aims to future-proof code by testing for features rather than sniffing for browser name and version. So, before using the TimeTravelCureCancer method, the current browser is tested to see whether it's supported. If it is, the script continues. If it isn't,the script silently fails with graceful degradation.

objSelectElement.add(objOptionElement);

objSelectElement.add(objOptionElement, null);

Wow -- that's kind of sad... even microsoft is standards compliant these days http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .microsoft.com, even though the index page is the only one that validates... :-)

use the coral chache http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsla shdot.org.nyud.net:8090

The World Wide Web Consortium defines the standards, just like ISO, IEEE, MPEG, etc. In fact, Microsoft is one of the many corporations and organisations part of the W3C, so the "masses" are in fact represented by the W3C.

DHTML = HTML + JavaScript + CSS.

It isn't a standard, but the parts (sans javascript, sorta) are. Firefox supports all 3. Please remove DHTML from your vocabulary, as it is just another buzzword.

From W3.org:

"Dynamic HTML (DHTML) is a term used by some vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and scripts that allows documents to be animated. The scripting interfaces provided in DHTML have a significant overlap with the DOM, particularly with the HTML module. Compatibility with DHTML was a motivating factor in the development of the DOM. The DOM, however, is more than DHTML. It is a platform- and language-neutral interface that will allow programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents, both HTML and XML."

source.

They are right here and here.

The website he's published on doesn't even present a doctype, perhaps he'd do better to talk to some people about that one first, rather than vent about IE's "lack of standards compliance".

i don't think so: if you try to pass it through the w3c validator, you get a 403 error: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsla shdot.org

go ahead and check it out if you want...

also there are a lot of javascript problems with slashdot... if you use firefox, and check the JavaScript console after you load Slashdot, there are a bunch of errors that show up...

Evrithing about SVG you will find in yahoo the newsgroup named SVG Developer: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ The SVG is also a W3 standard, so you will find the full spec on: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ Additional good information you get on http://svgx.org/ and http://svg.org/ The Microsoft stuff you can find under the keyword XAML.

There is a more subtle reason why browsers absolutely will not ever comply with any modern HTML specification: the specifications aren't entirely open.

Note that according to the W3C, modern HTML specification == XHTML. XHTML is derived from XML, not SGML. XML is open. No need to pay ISO or anybody else to get the full specs.

Amaya is the advanced Web editor of the W3C. It's not really production-ready, it's a kind of technology testbed. It supports the whole XHTML family, and XML languages like MathML and SVG.

One could say the same about Firefox's apparent refusal to implement VML.

Why does the CSS test page itself contain bad CSS code? Is this test really valid?

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profi le=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//www.webstandards.or g/act/acid2/test.html%23top

Errors
URI : http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html#to p

        * Line: 44

            Parse Error - second two]
        * Line: 89 Context : .parser-container div

            Invalid number : color orange is not a color value : orange
        * Line: 95 Context : .parser

            Property error doesn't exist : }
        * Line: 98 Context : .parser

            Property m rgin doesn't exist : 2em
        * Line: 98

            Parse error - Unrecognized : };
        * Line: 100 Context : .parser

            Invalid number : width only 0 can be a length. You must put an unit after your number : 200
        * Line: 101 Context : .parser

            Parse Error - ! error;
        * Line: 101 Context : .parser

            Parse error - Unrecognized : }

-Joe

Well, I agree that it would be nice if all browsers stopped pretending to be Mozilla. But there's already something for that which you're asking for: The Accept header.

If that were widely used it would be really sweet. Of course IE (although I'm unsure about the newest versions) is arrogant enough to send "Accept: */*".

My browser says "Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,tex t/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5" . And then to makes things even better there's Accept-Charset, Accept-Encoding and Accept-Language.