Review of the Presidential Web Sites' HTML

Crispen writes, "My dad, the Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen, recently reviewed the presidential candidates' Web sites. He didn't review their style, mind you -- he reviewed their HTML. If you are looking for one of the most revealing (and humorous) commentaries about the current U.S. presidential race, take a look."

Comments

Closing </i> tag missing in this story

[Telcontar]

The entire text below this story (in the front /. page) appears in italics. How ironic, wrong HTML in a story about wrong HTML ;-)

So this is what he means by "Open Source" ?

[fusion94]

If this is what he understands as open source then I'm voting for perot.

"Thanks for checking out our source code! I plan to use this space to post
special messages to those who are helping to improve our web site -- by making
our source code the best it can be. The fact that you are peeking behind the
scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet
effort. I'm grateful for your help and support in this campaign. Now let's
keep working to build the 21st Century of our dreams!

Al Gore"

Learning from the best

[billybob jr]

It's nice to see the campaign web pages taking a cue from the best porn pages with the pop up windows. George w Bush's popup takes you straight to a secure server for your $$$.

HTML gone wrong

[reality-bytes]

Its an interesting concept; this HTML, are we the only people who go sifting through the source; just for the hell of it?

At the end of the day, if its readable with the browser; thats all it ever needed to be - is there any real need to go nit-picking?
On the other hand it can only ever be good nettiquet to, if you find unworkable HTML, inform the webmaster so he make his page available to everyone.......

If you really want to generate your own unspeakably bad HTML, go to this page and look for information on this little companys' HTML editor, you'll probably (not) be surprised at how much you have to pay for it :)

Please do not check my HTML cos i've already checked it and it is definately cr*p

More Complete Listing of Party/Candidate Websites

[Yardley]

Since some party/candidate websites were left out of the HTML analysis, here's a more complete listing:

Official political party sites

Democratic National Committee

Democratic Socialists of America

Green Parties of North America

Labor Party

Libertarian Party

Natural Law Party

Reform Party

Republican National Committee

Socialist Party USA

Workers Party

Official candidate sites

Gary Bauer

Bill Bradley

Pat Buchanan

George W. Bush

Steve Forbes

Al Gore

Orrin Hatch

Alan Keyes

John McCain

Donald Trump

Btw, not everyone's still running. Get involved in politics. Change the course of history. Can anyone get a candidates position of support or non-support concerning the DeCSS-DVD-MPAA issue? Interesting to see Gore running Linux, and Bradley and him using Apache. And though McCain may not be on MS, he does have some skeletons in the proverbial web-closet: McCain pay-chat a Microsoft affair

Slashdot Code a little scrappy

[Bryan_Crowl]

Looks like slashdot has quite a few errors , Click here to check it out

Candidate for hire?

[Simon Brooke]

I recently did a similar exercise on UK politicians Web sites (my local representative had just asked me to design one for him) and the results were equally revealing and amusing.

But what gets me is how many of them are in the commercial comain, .com Does that mean you can buy them? 'Hi, I'm Al Gore, and I'm

running this candidacy as a commercial operation...'

Lynx Friendly?

[dattaway]

I've seen a rapid increase in sites that assume that shockwave plugins are available for Lynx.

No joke. Often, I like using a simple browser to cut through the fancy schmancy graphics and get down to the text message. Its what humans speak.

Many times I surf the int-r-net from a Wyse-60 terminal under lynx and appreciate getting just the facts. A little formatting is nice and a bit of confusion is expected, but what I saw on georgewbush.com was jibberish that only Ronald Regan could mumble off:

[nav_shadow_rt_mid.gif]
[nav_shadow_left_mid.gif] [ISMAP:nav_youth.gif]-[USEMAP:nav_youth.gif]
[nav_shadow_rt_mid.gif]
[nav_shadow_left_mid.gif]btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes) btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes) btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes)

What is his message? Between all that I can see a secret message in there. He wants money.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Tet]

Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?

Absolutely. I use it because it's so much faster than Netscape. At the end of the day, I'm rarely interested in how good the graphics are on a site, I'm after the content. I still have Netscape around, and use it for sites where the graphic content is important, but there's a place for both.

It's also not a case of actively supporting Lynx (or any other browser, for that matter). Any HTML 4.0 compliant page should be easily visible in any browser, including Lynx (yes, few current browsers fully implement HTML 4.0 yet, but they're getting there). What part of Lynx support do you think holds back advances? I'm not advocating support for Mosaic or Chimera, I'm merely hoping for standards compliant web pages. If I choose to use a browser that doesn't implement certain aspects of a page (e.g., images) that should be my choice.

Lynx is also great for those of us that have to do dial in support. When your only connection to the internet is through an 80x24 telnet window, and you *need* to check some details in order to fix a customer's problem, Netscape and IE aren't an option.

Linux and Gore...

[rootrot]

When will /. be announcing it's endorsement of Al Gore, the only candidate who runs his site on Linux. This would appear to be a foregone conclusion given the general "one-issue" tendencies of the group.

Remember, Al-Gorithms drive the net...perhaps there is more to his claim of creation than meets the eye...

rootrot

Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! NOT!

[Kit Cosper]

This is not an official post from Larry.

There isn't a Slashdot Giveaway

This is a bored individual who enjoys misleading people and generating unnecessary email.

Official VA promotions will always be posted on the VA Linux website.

Sorry for the confusion that has been created.

--Kit

Andover has issues also :)

[IanO]

Check this link out:

AndoverNews

This is just too funny.

------
IanO

Chicken, Egg, NT, IE, aieee!!!

[copito]

NT 4.0 comes with IE 2. This version can't access www.microsoft.com. No alternate page, nothing. Just a message like "You don't have permission to list the virtual directory /". In order to download IE, the easiest thing to do is to get Netscape (any old one will do) then go back to the Microsoft website with Netscape, wade through the ActiveXisms and get an IE.

I'm no zealot. I use Linux/Netscape for most things, but I think IE 5 is one of the best graphical browsers for stability and speed on any platform. However, the fact that 2.0 can't access www.microsoft.com suggests some serious issues on both ends.
--

OS/Server software much more interesting

[CentrX]

Personally, I think that what OS and server software that the candidates are running is much more interesting than how good their HTML is.

Note: George W. Bush, Pat Buchanan, and this "Erik Thompson" are all running IIS on NT4.

Chris Hagar