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 for one, welcome our new Standards Compliant Overlords.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
I was wondering if there was going to be a story on this.
Me too... I blogged this earlier today, and briefly (first impression) journal'd it too, and would love to comment now on some more technical aspects of the page now that I've had time to examine it more thoroughly. Kudos to all involved on a very positive step in the right direction!
The CSS is really clean and impressive. I don't have a problem with it at all at this point, but CSS was never really my strong suit so you may want to get a second (thousand) opinion on that.
I have to admit, it's nice to see the page load faster, with fewer visual errors in Firefox. The links and text seems quite a bit nicer. Now I can modify the CSS of the site to make it look however I want on my own system too, so that is certainly a benefit.
I'm sure many will point out that there are lots of errors in the HTML.
You can see for yourself, here. That part isn't that important, because once you begin the road to enlightenment, that zen of CSS, it's a journey that has no return.
I'm actually quite proud of Slashdot today, even though I merely post here.
I will be far more proud when the new moderation systems come online. Not sure how many of you submitted ideas and had discussions with CmdrTaco on that subject but I had a thread going with him for quite some time last year. Much of what was said was repetitive, geared towards filtering out what he already had considered or someone else had suggested, but he genuinely listened to some of the suggestions that were unique. I wonder what the timeline is on the moderation changes... Taco?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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
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.
"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
"Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled."
chickens
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?
Wow, what an exciting life you live.
... 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.
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.
edit my ass.
Sorry. There's no substitute for diet and exercise.
Show some repect, coward! That's a 2-digit UID you're talking to!
We already forced HTML 4.01 strict compliance on comments six months ago. Almost no one noticed.
We already converted 13M comments to valid HTML 4.01 strict. A couple of months ago. No one noticed.
It would be relatively trivial to force XHTML 1.0 strict compliance. I'd flip a switch to force compliance on new content, then rerun the converter for old content. The code's been tested to work for both HTML 4.01 strict and XHTML 1.0 strict (since we allow only a relatively small subset of HTML tags and attributes, this isn't that hard for comments, or even stories, which allows a lot more variety in tags, but everything still fits in the intersection of the two, so it's just a matter of changing a very few number of things, that the code already knows about).
But he bought it on ebay
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
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.
Err, except the way it is now is semantically correct - it's a list of links. Your way it's just a bunch of links all mooshed togethor with no semantics at all.
There is a lot of "div-itis" though, but I'm guessing that was to provide flexability for user defined stylesheets in the future, so can be forgiven i guess.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
+4 Funny for "Hahahahahaha :)"?!!! Hell, I can beat that. Check it:
:D
"BWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
oh and