Slashdot Mirror

The page says "Roll mouse over timeline icons to see summary of each document". So I did and nothing. Hmmmm. Well, let's see how it validates.

OH well.

Also, Tim Berner-Lee might have been a positive influence in the early days (an now to a lesser extent), but that doesn't mean that he "builds websites for a living". This is evident by the quality of his site. Sure, it serves it's purpose, but it's written using technology that has changed very little since 1997. The newer standards are designed to make updates easier, to make more things possible and to enrich the end user's experience. There is a big difference in job tasks between those who have a say in the standards and those who actually use the standards every day. And there would be a large difference in coding talent too.

I'm not saying XHTML is perfect, but let's face facts - it's better than HTML and it will be the markup of choice sometime in the near future. HTML will fade to the background, except for those academic zealots who are affraid of embracing change and the benefits that it offers.

XHTML Strict is a challenge for people to learn, especially when they have been coding HTML for years. They have unlearn the HTML way and change the way they design and build pages. XHTML Transitional is a nice step-up however.

XHTML was designed to replace HTML. HTML works ok, however due to its age it is not as compatible with more recent technologies such as XML. XHTML offers the good that HTML did, whilst being more flexible and "future proof".

I suggest you read the following, and heed their "guidance":
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Activity

And yes I understand the irony of typing invalid HTML into Slashdot whilst advocating XHTML ;-)

Also, Tim Berner-Lee might have been a positive influence in the early days (an now to a lesser extent), but that doesn't mean that he "builds websites for a living". This is evident by the quality of his site. Sure, it serves it's purpose, but it's written using technology that has changed very little since 1997. The newer standards are designed to make updates easier, to make more things possible and to enrich the end user's experience. There is a big difference in job tasks between those who have a say in the standards and those who actually use the standards every day. And there would be a large difference in coding talent too.

I'm not saying XHTML is perfect, but let's face facts - it's better than HTML and it will be the markup of choice sometime in the near future. HTML will fade to the background, except for those academic zealots who are affraid of embracing change and the benefits that it offers.

XHTML Strict is a challenge for people to learn, especially when they have been coding HTML for years. They have unlearn the HTML way and change the way they design and build pages. XHTML Transitional is a nice step-up however.

XHTML was designed to replace HTML. HTML works ok, however due to its age it is not as compatible with more recent technologies such as XML. XHTML offers the good that HTML did, whilst being more flexible and "future proof".

I suggest you read the following, and heed their "guidance":
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Activity

And yes I understand the irony of typing invalid HTML into Slashdot whilst advocating XHTML ;-)

Anyone making a new website would be foolish to use HTML 4.01.

I disagree. Consider reading the following article: Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful.

Is that why the W3C site isn't written in HTML 4.01?

Many regularly-updated sections of the W3C's site aren't written in XHTML (e.g., Web Accessibility Initiative).

Is that why people who make build websites for a living (like myself) code XHTML?

Tim Berners-Lee's documents aren't marked up using XHTML.

I suggest you spend some time reading posts made to the comp.infosystems.www.authoring newsgroups, whose contributors include, among others, academics who've marked up their documents properly years before all the blogging designers were polluting the Web with their "guidance".

Anyone making a new website would be foolish to use HTML 4.01.

I disagree. Consider reading the following article: Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful.

Is that why the W3C site isn't written in HTML 4.01?

Many regularly-updated sections of the W3C's site aren't written in XHTML (e.g., Web Accessibility Initiative).

Is that why people who make build websites for a living (like myself) code XHTML?

Tim Berners-Lee's documents aren't marked up using XHTML.

I suggest you spend some time reading posts made to the comp.infosystems.www.authoring newsgroups, whose contributors include, among others, academics who've marked up their documents properly years before all the blogging designers were polluting the Web with their "guidance".

For the record... Slashdot does emit code to an HTML standard, it just happens to be HTML 3.2. That's a standard. Call it "outdated" if you like but if it works, it works, right?

W3C's HTML validator finds in the current front page 164 errors. (I had to save the page locally on my hard disk, and validate the uploaded file. Trying to validate the URL http://slashdot.org/ had 403 Forbidden as a result.)

So, the current Slashdot is not in the "outdated" HTML 3.2 standard. There's no problem with an older HTML version, although I prefer XHTML. The problem is it is not valid HTML 3.2.

I really think Slashdot updating their HTML would be _much_ harder than what was suggested above. MUUUUUCH harder. I think what was suggested above will happen much sooner.

I think you are probably right. And so does somebody else!

Slashdot does emit code to an HTML standard, it just happens to be HTML 3.2.

Nice try, Jamie. That'd be why the W3C Validator reports 207 validation errors on Slashdot's front page, eh? The HTML is absolutely rancid with unbalanced start/end tags, it's a miracle anything renders it properly.

Of course, you've done your best to hide this, haven't you? If anyone wants to try plugging "http://slashdot.org" into that validator, you'll get a "403 Forbidden" error - yep, the fine folks at Slashdot have blocked the W3C from accessing the page. But save the HTML to a local file and validate that, it'll be most illuminating. You'll need to tell it to use encoding "iso-8859-1 (Western Europe)", since that's sent in the http headers rather than defined in the HTML code.

OK, resume flaming us and our sucky HTML

Did I do OK?

If Slashdot's HTML is standard, why do you block the wc3 validator? What possible reason could you have for that?

Since an AC here was so informative in posting it, I'll post it to: Coral Cache link of 189 errors in Slashdot HTML.

"This page is not Valid HTML 3.2!" says the validator.

Converting the static code to CSS WAS a helpful experiment, because it's an illustration of how much you could save by modifying your code to generate it. The bandwidth savings alone are awesome. But, hey, "it doesn't scale well," right? The excuse for any user-submitted feature suggestion (because heaven forbid Taco implement something he didn't think of).

Grr. The editors of Slashdot are frustrating.

If you check the w3c validator, you will see it finds 129 errors (that may fluctuate due to the content, but there ARE errors).

Oh, and since you've BLOCKED the w3c validator, I had to go through a Coral Cache link.

If you check the w3c validator, you will see it finds 129 errors (that may fluctuate due to the content, but there ARE errors).

Oh, and since you've BLOCKED the w3c validator, I had to go through a Coral Cache link.

I have one URL for you: XSLT. No css, no html, just news articles marked up with XML. Been a W3C standard since 1999.

You've chosen narrow views of both XML and interoperability, or you aren't familiar with granularity as an architectural imperative, but let's just skip that for now and focus on the core assertion of this thread, that investment is required before innovation can be yielded.

"Why hasn't XML lead to a new generation of innovative products?"

Because XML is not the silver bullet for all the worlds interoperability problems?

It doesn't have to be what you just said in order to enable massive amounts of innovation. The technology just has to be an enabler with some capabilities, and then investment will yield solutions.

How much investment? First of all, just enough to make the enabling technology available at the platform level. After the platform supports the technology, further investment to instantiate products can be made by anyone using the platform, one good idea at a time.

Who is responsible for investing to develop the platform in the first place? In the case of Internet Explorer, the opportunity to invest and improve the platform is open only to MS. And they aren't investing to develop the browser platform anymore.

So, uh, the rest of the discussion is only theoretical. MS likes it that way.

I myself would prefer to have the discussion after $0.01 - $0.1B has been spent to improve the platform by enabling XML technologies including XHTML, SVG, XFORMS, and SMIL. That would still leave $74.09 - $74.90B to redistribute to MS shareholders. They'd be free to do what they want with the money, and the rest of the software industry would be free to create employment through a new generation of innovative browser-based applications.

You've chosen narrow views of both XML and interoperability, or you aren't familiar with granularity as an architectural imperative, but let's just skip that for now and focus on the core assertion of this thread, that investment is required before innovation can be yielded.

"Why hasn't XML lead to a new generation of innovative products?"

Because XML is not the silver bullet for all the worlds interoperability problems?

It doesn't have to be what you just said in order to enable massive amounts of innovation. The technology just has to be an enabler with some capabilities, and then investment will yield solutions.

How much investment? First of all, just enough to make the enabling technology available at the platform level. After the platform supports the technology, further investment to instantiate products can be made by anyone using the platform, one good idea at a time.

Who is responsible for investing to develop the platform in the first place? In the case of Internet Explorer, the opportunity to invest and improve the platform is open only to MS. And they aren't investing to develop the browser platform anymore.

So, uh, the rest of the discussion is only theoretical. MS likes it that way.

I myself would prefer to have the discussion after $0.01 - $0.1B has been spent to improve the platform by enabling XML technologies including XHTML, SVG, XFORMS, and SMIL. That would still leave $74.09 - $74.90B to redistribute to MS shareholders. They'd be free to do what they want with the money, and the rest of the software industry would be free to create employment through a new generation of innovative browser-based applications.

You've chosen narrow views of both XML and interoperability, or you aren't familiar with granularity as an architectural imperative, but let's just skip that for now and focus on the core assertion of this thread, that investment is required before innovation can be yielded.

"Why hasn't XML lead to a new generation of innovative products?"

Because XML is not the silver bullet for all the worlds interoperability problems?

It doesn't have to be what you just said in order to enable massive amounts of innovation. The technology just has to be an enabler with some capabilities, and then investment will yield solutions.

How much investment? First of all, just enough to make the enabling technology available at the platform level. After the platform supports the technology, further investment to instantiate products can be made by anyone using the platform, one good idea at a time.

Who is responsible for investing to develop the platform in the first place? In the case of Internet Explorer, the opportunity to invest and improve the platform is open only to MS. And they aren't investing to develop the browser platform anymore.

So, uh, the rest of the discussion is only theoretical. MS likes it that way.

I myself would prefer to have the discussion after $0.01 - $0.1B has been spent to improve the platform by enabling XML technologies including XHTML, SVG, XFORMS, and SMIL. That would still leave $74.09 - $74.90B to redistribute to MS shareholders. They'd be free to do what they want with the money, and the rest of the software industry would be free to create employment through a new generation of innovative browser-based applications.

You've chosen narrow views of both XML and interoperability, or you aren't familiar with granularity as an architectural imperative, but let's just skip that for now and focus on the core assertion of this thread, that investment is required before innovation can be yielded.

"Why hasn't XML lead to a new generation of innovative products?"

Because XML is not the silver bullet for all the worlds interoperability problems?

It doesn't have to be what you just said in order to enable massive amounts of innovation. The technology just has to be an enabler with some capabilities, and then investment will yield solutions.

How much investment? First of all, just enough to make the enabling technology available at the platform level. After the platform supports the technology, further investment to instantiate products can be made by anyone using the platform, one good idea at a time.

Who is responsible for investing to develop the platform in the first place? In the case of Internet Explorer, the opportunity to invest and improve the platform is open only to MS. And they aren't investing to develop the browser platform anymore.

So, uh, the rest of the discussion is only theoretical. MS likes it that way.

I myself would prefer to have the discussion after $0.01 - $0.1B has been spent to improve the platform by enabling XML technologies including XHTML, SVG, XFORMS, and SMIL. That would still leave $74.09 - $74.90B to redistribute to MS shareholders. They'd be free to do what they want with the money, and the rest of the software industry would be free to create employment through a new generation of innovative browser-based applications.

What, you're saying we should make our pages look sucky in IE so everybody gets Firefox?

Utter crap.

People should get Firefox becase it's a good browser with plenty of features and none of the same security holes as IE. Not because a site they like doesn't work in anything else. Not because 'omg teh IE is notez teh browser!!1!1!' (which the W3C have ).

Accessibility >= Design > Compliance

Ever heard about CSS?

Look, there is no such thing as a MARGINTOP attribute..

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/attributes.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#edef -BODY

So how can it be interpreted wrong?

Ever heard about CSS?

Look, there is no such thing as a MARGINTOP attribute..

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/attributes.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#edef -BODY

So how can it be interpreted wrong?

How bout /. would fix it's old and broken html too?

yeah, one can only hope ...

See this message: w3c validation for /. : forbidden

All of us are highly sensitized to this issue and have emphasized that these concerns must be addressed," said Geoffrey Strongin, platform security architect for AMD. Strongin argued that, far from undermining privacy, hardware-based security will improve user protections. "What we are doing here is a tremendous enhancement to privacy. Without adequate security, privacy protections is impossible. ( ZDNet)

My brother (who works for IBM) recently sent me an article on USA Today about the system IBM and Honda have developed for speech-interface with a GPS-enabled navigation computer. Really cool stuff.

For those of you who haven't read it, check out The Unfinished Revolution by Michael Dertouzos. I don't agree with all of his analysis (he was a little lacking in pragmatism on some points), but overall this book was very insightful. This book, along with Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee, caused a big paradigm shift in my thinking about computer technology.

Intended humour aside, that may work in many browsers, but it's not valid HTML.

Use CSS styling instead.

That's a lot, but not yet enough to impact the upcoming election, especially since the readers are from all over the world, not just the US.

Maybe I haven't examined that long article closely enough- but although I find many descriptions of your desire to get it read prior to the federal election, I can nowhere see a suggestion as to which party or candidates you prefer.

Do you think it's too obvious to bear mentioning? I certainly can't see IP listed as a platform on either johnkerry.com or georgewbush.com*. The only occurence of "intellectual property" on either site is the same quote from John Kerry, where he excoriates China for bootlegging. Although, George W Bush has demonstrated a willingness to violate copyright in campaign advertisements... but he's a "do as I say, not as I do" fellow.

Or do you not have an opinion, and just want to "get out the vote" to encourage political engagement that could lead to future change?

* As a side note, I observed numerous and systematic HTML violations on georgewbush.com, which will surely influence my own vote!

The web was originally TEXT ONLY. How many roll & scroll applications used a mouse at all in 1997?

I share your righteous indignation at the stupid patent, but your facts are a bit off...

Read Tim Berners-Lee's FAQ about the web. The first web browser was designed on a NeXT system, and was graphical. Yes, a line-mode browser was written shortly thereafter, but a windowed point-and-click version came first. Graphics weren't inline, but they were definitely part of the initial idea. But the app itself was indeed GUI based.

And how many applications used a mouse in 1997!? Dude, all the apps I've been using have been with a mouse since Jan 24, 1984, where've you been? :)

But seriously, the patent is patently ridiculous, excuse the pun. The "invention" is a method for using the tab key to select a link on a web page. I feel as though millions of geeks all cried out "DUH!" and were silenced...

- Peter

I assume you mean amaya?

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

403 Forbidden

Please make sure you have entered the URL correctly.

I love the fact that his channel broadcasts all movies in their original aspect ratio with 5.1-channel sound. And this part made me laugh:

"We have a show called HDNet World Report where we put cameras in all kinds of hot spots--Iraq, wherever. And when we show a firefight or some sort of bombing, we don't have the reporter say anything. They just say, "We're in Iraq, we're in Baghdad, and there's a firefight going on, I'll shut up and let you watch it." And being able to see it in wide-screen high resolution with 5.1 sound, if you have a tank firing, you hear it coming out of one ear and see it leaving out of the other ear. It's just incredible. Just to be able to see it like you're actually sitting there is amazing."

This does not stop recommendations which are encumbered by patents possessed by non-working group memebers of the W3C and non-W3C members to be ratified.

It's not what I would have wanted, but it ended up a big compromise (some would argue that the policy using RAND was the W3C caving...) ...See here for some of the goings-on concerning this policy...

Sorry... :-(

I hope Apache wins the day here. However, the entire reason for the RAND proposal in the first place was to allow commerical interest to capture open Internet standards. I don't think they will be easily deflected.

sPh

XHTML means that the page HAS to be formatted correctly

Not true. If it is served as text/html it should be parsed as HTML. See XHTML media types on w3.org.

Their CSS evidently needs a little work, though.

Speaking of correct HTML, did anyone else notice that their new site validates completely?

This Page Is Valid HTML 4.01 Strict!
Now all we have to do is get the rest of the planet to do the same :/

great!

No further comment!

Nick

Looks nice, And valid too!

*cough*

Looks nice, And valid too!

*cough*

Looks nice, And valid too!
--
Slashdot only allows a user with your karma to post 2 times per day (more or less, depending on moderation). You've already shared your thoughts with us that many times. Take a breather, and come back and see us in 24 hours or so.
-
I'm still posting :-)

I've had the same problem. No word processors are any good at outlining, with one exception: Amaya. Amaya is a web browser/editor developed by the W3C. It is the very best HTML authoring tool I have ever used. HTML is the very best language for creating structured documents, especially outlines. The first reply suggested using HTML + CSS, which is right. But Amaya is the software tool to use in authoring. I use Amaya for taking notes during lectures (I'm a medical student). An added benefit is that I can easily browse through my notes following hyperlinks between documents. I could also post my notes on the web if I wanted to. The Windows version is quite nice to use, but the Mac version (which I use most of the time) is terrible.

Hi, do you understand how http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html#h-12. 1Links in HTML documents work?

Check out the w3c's semantic web languages. Boring and technical, but web-friendly. Autoconverters for extracting semantics from well-formed XML available.

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

Go ahead and flame the W3, but at least the basics of the web are free. Wait for MS to get on the ball and they'll own semantic search...

But what does the w3c say about this? After all they're the ones who decide what happens on the web. The mozilla guys making APNG is just as bad as MS using IE custom tags.

From what ive seen the specs aint looking to good, for now Im personaly saying stick with the MNG and JNG.

The question is not randomly generating. They should have some checking for this

There's no reason newberrycollege.net couldn't have implemented HTTP cache control measures.

OK - how's this?

Back in April, Slashdot reported the announcement of a Universal 3D File Format by Intel, Microsoft & others - to be "as open as MP3". Of course, that's not all that open. And this turns out to be the sneaky part. There is a real open standard already - X3D is ISO-ratified, royalty-free, and has multiple open source implementations. U3D is "going to be submitted to ISO" - one day - but right now they're talking to ECMA, which allows royalty-bearing patents.
I found this article by Tony Parisi, co-chair of the X3D Working Group a fascinating insider's picture of the standards wars, along with insights into what it takes to release an online game, what really killed VRML, and why open standards do (and don't) matter.
I mean, a royalty-bearing, pseudo-open universal 3D format from Intel and Microsoft? Sorry, guys. That trick doesn't work anymore


BTW, I need to get a life.

While this is an inconvinience ( a "service" according to VeriSign, heh), this wasn't the major problem that a fundemental change to the top level DNS hierarchy was causing.

According to RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1), each response to an HTTP request is responded too with first a status code, then content. Therefore, all VeriSign had to do to fix the 404/502 problem would be to return all SiteFinder pages as status code 404. (Disclaimer: I am not aware if they actually did or not). If that was implemented, browsers could easily ignore SiteFinder while still displaying proper error codes.

The big problem is that DNS is not used just for HTTP, but also for most FTP, telnet, email, you name it. If it works over the Internet, chances are it locates a server to establish a TCP connection to using DNS. Now, realize that your Telnet client doesn't know or care what an HTTP error code 404 is because, hey, it's a telnet client, not a browser, coupled with the fact that the actual DNS system would never return an error code but would instead re-route all bogus queries to the SiteFinder webserver, which has no ports open except 80, and you can quickly see how "mistyped URL" went from "simple mistake" to "hundreds of 'Connection timed out: 500 seconds' " messages quickly.

Any mistyped e-mail address would make a mail server keep retrying to find "user@yhaoo.com" over and over, thinking the server was down, as opposed to it not existing.

Think of it as if instead of a busy signal, telephones would ring 8 times and connect you to directory assistance if you dialed a disconnected number by accident, with no way to tell until the operator answered. IF you where as dumb as a computer, you'd just keep trying, thinking it would eventually have to work.

While this is an inconvinience ( a "service" according to VeriSign, heh), this wasn't the major problem that a fundemental change to the top level DNS hierarchy was causing.

According to RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1), each response to an HTTP request is responded too with first a status code, then content. Therefore, all VeriSign had to do to fix the 404/502 problem would be to return all SiteFinder pages as status code 404. (Disclaimer: I am not aware if they actually did or not). If that was implemented, browsers could easily ignore SiteFinder while still displaying proper error codes.

The big problem is that DNS is not used just for HTTP, but also for most FTP, telnet, email, you name it. If it works over the Internet, chances are it locates a server to establish a TCP connection to using DNS. Now, realize that your Telnet client doesn't know or care what an HTTP error code 404 is because, hey, it's a telnet client, not a browser, coupled with the fact that the actual DNS system would never return an error code but would instead re-route all bogus queries to the SiteFinder webserver, which has no ports open except 80, and you can quickly see how "mistyped URL" went from "simple mistake" to "hundreds of 'Connection timed out: 500 seconds' " messages quickly.

Any mistyped e-mail address would make a mail server keep retrying to find "user@yhaoo.com" over and over, thinking the server was down, as opposed to it not existing.

Think of it as if instead of a busy signal, telephones would ring 8 times and connect you to directory assistance if you dialed a disconnected number by accident, with no way to tell until the operator answered. IF you where as dumb as a computer, you'd just keep trying, thinking it would eventually have to work.

@-moz-document domain(it.slashdot.org) {
a { color: #006666 ! important; }
}

Examples bug comment

It was checked into the trunk codebase after Firefox had branched, so it won't show up in Firefox until the 1.1 builds.

• uses frontpage, frames, lacks doctype, doesn't validate (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fww w.orbitsat.com%2F)--clearly has no regard for web standards, as well as standards of human decency
• slams former partner directtv on front page, demonstrating a malicious character
• contains plenty of sleazy javascripts to prevent right-click, to pop up windows on exit, and to prevent text selecting, to track ppl

FUD. Microsoft left one working group, which deals with Web Services; that is what your second link refers to. Microsoft are still members of the W3C's CSS Working Group (and quite a few others). And as far as prior art goes, the method described in the patent is basically the same as the way Microsoft Word applies styles, which potentially dates back to 1983.

FUD. Microsoft left one working group, which deals with Web Services; that is what your second link refers to. Microsoft are still members of the W3C's CSS Working Group (and quite a few others). And as far as prior art goes, the method described in the patent is basically the same as the way Microsoft Word applies styles, which potentially dates back to 1983.

FUD. Microsoft left one working group, which deals with Web Services; that is what your second link refers to. Microsoft are still members of the W3C's CSS Working Group (and quite a few others). And as far as prior art goes, the method described in the patent is basically the same as the way Microsoft Word applies styles, which potentially dates back to 1983.