Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot HTML 4.01 and CSS
After 8 years of my nasty, crufty, hodge podged together HTML, last night we finally switched over to clean HTML 4.01 with a full complement of CSS. While there are a handful of bugs and some lesser used functionality isn't quite done yet, the transition has gone very smoothly. You can use our sourceforge project page to submit bugs and we'd really appreciate the feedback. Thanks to Tim Vroom for putting the HTML in place, Wes Moran for writing the HTML in the first place, and Pudge for writing the code to convert
900k users, 60k stories, and 13 million comments to comply. And for the brave, download the stylesheet and start experimenting with new themes and designs for Slashdot: some sort of official contest to re-design Slashdot is coming soon, so you can get a head start now.
Response to some reader notes in the forum:
- There are a handful of validation errors. Some will be fixed in the next day or so. Others are external HTML that is out of our hands. We may never toally validate with zero errors. yes we're comfortable with that.
- We're not going to XHTML for the same reasons as above- we control almost all of our HTML, but some of it (like the ads, and imports from other sites) just isn't ours to muck about with. We could go to XHTML, and someday we might, but today we're happy to just get to HTML 4.01 and CSS.
- Light Mode will be back in some form or another. The problem is that light mode served two purposes: Low Bandwidth, and Simplified Design. The later will probably be handled with a CSS theme (we have a handheld theme already). Low Bandwidth is a little trickier, but we will resolve that soon.
- All of our code is beta tested on www.slashcode.com and use.perl.org. Unfortunately there's always a few issues from those tiny tiny sites and the giant bohemoth that is Slashdot itself.
I was wondering if there was going to be a story on this. I noticed the upgrade last night. Let me be the first (post? ha ha) to say, "Good job guys!" Yeah. it took you awhile. But better late than never, eh?
:-)
/team!
And for the brave, download the stylesheet and start experimenting with new themes and designs for Slashdot:
I was just going to ask if we could get a few more CSS styles like we saw in the Beta. Glad to see you're already on top of it.
I did some testing with a FireFox version I *know* contains the infamous "Slashdot bug". (Not sure if it's corrected in recent versions since I normally use Mozilla or Safari.) As far as I can tell from testing, the bug is completely fixed. Considering the upgrades, one would expect this to be the case, but you can never be too sure.
Last but not least, the "Politics" and "Apple" sections look as nice as ever, but I'm afraid that the other sections look worse than ever. Can we turn off the colors for the other sites until better CSS sheets can be made? (Preferrably ones that don't hurt our eyes?) Yeah, the games section has the full treatment too, but I swear that the shades of purple it uses are causing me to go blind.
An alternative solution to turning off the CSS for the other sections is to provide the front page CSS as a style option on all the pages. That way we could simply shut off the crazy colors without pulling the whole "games.slashdot.org/article.pl -> slashdot.org/article.pl" trick.
Well, that's my 3.14159265 cents worth. Again, good job
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I for one, welcome our new Standards Compliant Overlords.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Why not XHTML?
Yes, and for those of us using "Light" slashdot version (it's in "Preferences" - white background etc, _much_ easier to read IMHO) now it looks like a buttload of shit. $(SUBJ). Will it be fixed?
Although the Slashdot guys have blocked it again, there was a short time this morning where the validator could get through. It showed the main page as validating Ok for the most part, but some of the sidebars (especially the Freshmeat sidebar) as failing miserably. Just looking at the source doesn't give me a headache anymore though, which is a massive improvement.
I read the internet for the articles.
You mean like this site that has been acting as the beta site for Slashdot?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Validator says it's not correct Strict. There are 13 errors. Some areas still have FONT tags and whatnot, but I don't know if those are includes from external sites (and therefore out of
Welcome to the 21st Century.
At first glance, it doesn't look any different to me, so you must have done something right.
Except then I hit reply and the post a comment dialog looks a bit different but not bad.
Must have been quite the effort, congrats.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
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
Time to get on the Duke Nukem watch...
Why don't you guys have a formal testing process in place for slashcode?
They do. Beta code gets tested here before it's put on Slashdot. Now the upgrade process often generates quite a few 503s (since Slashdot is actually down during that time), but it's just a temporary problem.
If you're still getting 500s and 503s, try deleting all your cookies that point to "slashdot.org". Sometimes the upgrades have problems with old cookies.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Can we get some stats APIs? Like per-story counts of unique repliers (+/- ACs), broken down by point score, with metadata (date/time posted, categories, submitter ID, "author" ID). And links in the story, and comments (per point score)? How about some karma details?
I'd like to see a Slashdotter make an app that shows trends of posting results. And an app that draws networks between posters, destinations, categories, etc. Let's rub Slashdot's soft green underbelly!
--
make install -not war
These are the ones I could find in the head:
http://images.slashdot.org/base.css
http://images.slashdot.org/comments.css
http://images.slashdot.org/ostgnavbar.css
http://images.slashdot.org/slashdot.css
http://images.slashdot.org/print.css
http://images.slashdot.org/handheld.css
Long signatures suck.
Why don't you guys have a formal testing process in place for slashcode?
I'd prefer that they worry less about standards compliant code, testing, and other bullshit and instead work on eliminating worthless editorials, duplicate stories, and any number of other far more important issues to make Slashdot better.
It's nice to see that they are working on *something* but it *was* working all those years just fine. It's just been the last two years that Slashdot has gone *really* downhill with stuff that has nothing (or little) to do w/the codebase.
So that's what is wrong with it. I have been looking at the page all day thinking there was something weird going on and now I know!
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Better rending in Firefox and less dishonesty! What's not to like?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Most die-hard firefox users will know this, but since Taco threw down the gauntlet, those mere firefox mortals who wish to muck with the CSS and "win a prize!" can take a look at: Jesse Ruderman's page on using local style sheets (good links there) and there's always the style sheet chooser plus add on (yeah, the site's in French and I haven't tried that extension in a while since I use Safari mostly, but it should work).
Mind the gap...
After eight years, this news website has finally gotten around to using proper HTML.
So, will it be another eight years before this news website gets around to using some proper editors?
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
http://images.slashdot.org/base.css
http://images.slashdot.org/comments.css
http://images.slashdot.org/ostgnavbar.css
http://images.slashdot.org/slashdot.css
http://images.slashdot.org/print.css
http://images.slashdot.org/handheld.css
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I would be very interested to know wheter this change has a big effect on the slashdot bandwith usage.
'Times New Roman' is so 27BC. It'd only take one line of css to get something with class. Like 'Comic Sans MS'. Everyone loves 'Comic Sans MS'.
NS 4 nearly has no support for CSS. That's why the "new slashdot" (heh, never thought I would see that phrase) looks crap in it.
Seriously, don't you think it's time to drop support for NS 4? I mean this is the slashdot crowd, that has been saying for the last 8 years that developers should comply with standards and don't tune web pages for a specific browser, and now that finaly it is compliant with the standard, you are complaining that it looks bad in an ancient browser? You know, slashdot now also looks completely crap on BeOS's netpositive. should I complain about that as well?
--
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.
...get the following fixed? When you browse with a threshold that doesn't show all comments, the page numbers to click are completely broken. Sometimes, when I click on the 3rd or 4th page, I _still_ see the first post according to my threshold.
There is actually no way to view all comments in order. I usually resort to clicking a page way later, like the 6th or 7th until I see a comment other than the first. But then I don't know if I missed any.
The pages seem to count all comments regardless of score. The proper way is to count the posts _after_ the threshold is applied.
This has been bugging me _for ages_!
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
If you've ever done serious web design then you know that going from a 5 year old plus table-based layout to a completely CSS-driven one is more like a Godzilla step.
More importantly, it makes things like what you are requesting relative bably steps.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
"Just looking at the source doesn't give me a headache anymore though, which is a massive improvement."
/.!
Yeah, all I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead.
Wait a minute, that's not
I didn't notice nothing differnt about slashdot this morning. It still looks the same. They haven't done anything like DHTML or menus at the top with drop down effect. They're also still using Perl instead of PHP. The shuold be moving to PHP since that's what all other sites are doing now. THey also havn't changed their icons in like forever. And the green Slashdot logo needs to go. There's also no background graphic to give the site a more polished magazine like feel. If they knew anything about design, they'd be following the lead of sites like Wired.com and Playboy.com. After all Slashdot is really just an online magazine at this point. You guys should also consider a print version of Slashdot. I think if you combine the look of Wired, Playboy and MacOS X you'd have a winning UI. You should also force user's browsers to open a new window devoid of any browser menus/widgets/buttons. That way you could then create a true UI for Slashdot and make it like a magazine application. A navigation bar at the top with Aqua-esque buttons would be grand. There should also be application sounds. Clicking on buttons should play different sounds. Like if you click on the link for apple.slashdot.org, you should hear the Mac startup sound. Or if you click on yro.slashdot.org, you should hear a gavel pounding on a desk. Or if you click on bsd.slashdot.org, you should hear a death rattle. There should also be a live Slashdot cam that shows us what you guys are up to at any time of the day. Kind of like Jennicam used to be, only like heavily censored so we don't see private stuff. Maybe the cameras could have moderation so that the highest modded images go on the front page in the upper left corner. Another thing. There is this program/standard file format called Flash. It can really spice up a site and make it feel more like an application. You could also embed some Java apps too, but Flash is the way of the future for all web sites. It's the tool most creatives prefer. So can anywone tell me what is actually different about Slashdot today than it has been since like the 1980s when it was called Usenet?
I also recommend that people start sharing their own user-defined stylesheets (like they've done with Gmail), so this site no longer looks like crap.
Like a CSS Zen Slashdot.
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
In safari and it seems firefox for macintosh weirdness abounds throughout the new slashdot layout. Things show up in sans-serif fonts at random, for example the contents of the "recent posts" box on user pages, or the "allowed html" beneath a post. Things have unexplained margins or indents; for example the "Subject" box when you submit seems to be over one space from the comment box. When showing comments, all the gray boxes have surprisingly large internal margins but everything else has no margins at all, all the comments are scrunched together. Font sizes seem to vary sometimes at random, for example the first three headlines on the front page are a totally different size from the ones beneath. The whole thing looks a bit hodgepodge.
Of course, web design is unpredictable and I'm sure it'll get sorted out eventually.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I see it the other way around. I loaded it up, read articles, clicked the links, changed the filtering, etc, and it all worked just fine.
I think Misagon should have been more clear that he didn't like the way it looked instead of saying that it was broken, because it's clearly not broken. The plain HTML style for Netscape 4.x is very common these days, any Netscape 4 user should be used to it by now.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You're in Light Mode. Slashboxes don't appear in Light Mode for obvious reasons (and I believe that's a change from before). Go to Preferences: Homepage and uncheck Light, then save. That should do the trick.
There's one thing you easily conform to standards with, end your img and br tags properly.
/> />
Example 1: <img src="img.png"
Example 2: <br
... slashdot does not work with Netscape 4 when I try it today.
It sucks in Mosaic 1.0 as well.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Ever since the November 2003 article on A List Apart, I've been wondering if this day would come. Almost two years later, it looks like it's finally here!
Having worked on smaller sites, I can imagine how difficult this change was. I took a quick peek at the code; it's so much cleaner now, and it loads so much faster! Congratulations, guys.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
Hahahahahaha :)
The plan right now is to have a few large chunks of the site drop in and out for a less bandwidth intensive version. Essentially we strip the site down to what must be here: Less menu items, less boxes on the right. Basically, "Title" "Advertisement" "Stories" "Some Menus And Links". VERY minimal. Get the page down to as few bytes as possible. This We'll probably have a stylesheet too, but mainly this page will just have far fewer bytes of stuff.
Design-wise we can create themes for modern handhelds. A generic theme is already available but it's a real quickee job. But now we can create thinned down look and feel customized for any individual handheld. Of course we don't really have any of these fancy devices ourselves, so hopefully readers will help by designing CSS that does just that.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
This was done awhile ago, and almost no one noticed.
Basically, we were allowing various things in comments for years that were not compliant with HTML 4.01 strict. Even moreso for stories. So about six months ago we fixed the code to force compliance with HTML 4.01 strict, and about two months ago converted old content accordingly.
edit my ass.
Sorry. There's no substitute for diet and exercise.
If you want to clean up your code more, all the menu items are anchors wrapped in list items. this can be much cleaner styled as:
As compared to:
BTW, nice use of fieldset.
It's turning into a morph of Godwin's Law.
Because it's my law, I will call it MFH's Law:
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
+4 Funny for "Hahahahahaha :)"?!!! Hell, I can beat that. Check it:
:D
"BWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
oh and
In a normal browser, that's fine and dandy. However, HTML itself (devoid of CSS) is read and used by other devices. For instance if I am browsing in Lynx, that list makes a huge difference in display and don't even get me started on voice readers and other things.
HTML is not there purely to be used as an anchor for style. It is there to explain what kinds of content a document contains. I mean, why use an h1 - h6 or a p or em or strong? You could simply create contextual style definitions for divs and spans which would, more or less, do everything that other tags do.
I mean really, if HTML was really just there for CSS all you'd need would be , , , , , , , and . You wouldn't even need since you could could just define inline divs.
Also, the order of the buttons has changed
Oh good, it's not just me.
is that to get us double checking
If they wanted to do that, you'd think they'd simply not show a Submit button until after the first Preview.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Please, please, please display years on your dates ... I can't believe this hasn't been fixed yet.