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Obfuscated HTML Contest?

Posted by Cliff on from the they-do-it-for-other-languages dept.

ptaff asks: "We all know the nightmare of typical HTML developer: you get different results on different browsers/platforms (and we're talking HTML only, no CSS/scripts). To make matters worse, MSIE has this ability to render completely invalid HTML code (missing tags, invalid nesting, you get the point). Mozilla and its many cousins are trying hard to keep up with the inconsistencies of today's 'web-optimized-for-MSIE', but where is the limit? As an exercise, can you build the most malformed HTML document that can be rendered in MSIE but will choke on others browsers?"

2 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. You are in a maze of specialized tags, by Myself · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not make it render something different but valid in as many different browsers as possible?

    My sympathy goes out to the judges of this contest.

  2. not writing obfuscated - find it by HTD · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think it's better to find pages that use such code. example - the www.europcar.com .de .fr pages the use a javascript menu that does ONLY work in MSIE on windows. No MacIE, Mozilla(choose your platform), Opera 7 or other alternative browsers. You simply cannot see the menu or cannot use it - therefore you cannot navigate. There are more pages out there, writing this code on purpose is pointless, because it has already been written ;) Find those pages and complain, make a publicly available list of invalid non-working HTML pages. Write the webmasters about your problems. And of course show workarounds so that those "programmers" can see and change their mistakes.

    A good reason for coding obfuscated (be it valid or invalid) HTML would be to create a repository of "real world" code for Browser developers out there to check if it works with their product. Then of course a "desired output" image should be attached to the code.

    Creating a blacklist of corporate pages using invalid html is my favourite idea, but the mentioned repository would help a lot coders out there...