|
Posted by Kieran on June 2, 2005, 9:45 am
Please log in for more thread options
> On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, Kieran wrote:
>
>> Thanks - I sort of had the idea this was the case, however, many of the
>> users of the CMS may also have "Legacy" (definitely fewer) html
>
> translation: useless historical ballast
>
>> skills,
>
> for some value of the term 'skill', I suppose...
>
>> and while I still wish my site to conform to a standard that every
>> browser can tackle,
>
> Current browsers can do a perfectly fine job with HTML/2.0, you know,
> and even better if a stylesheet is applied. There is *no need* for
> that Netscape-ish presentational crud, and anyone who is still
> producing it seriously (as opposed to it lurking in their legacy
> documents, to which I'd have to plead guilty myself) really needs to
> re-educate themselves about the WWW.
>
>> I also wish it to be more forgiving with users HTML, which it
>> appears more possible to do with Transitional.
>
> I'd guess you're confusing two different things. If you're saying
> that your authors are incapable of producing syntactically valid HTML,
> then maybe you should consider introducing a publishing process which
> rectifies that problem. It's not fair to send garbage to one's
> readers and hoping that they have a browser which fixes-up bugs in the
> same way as the one(s) that the author "tested" with.
This is a very valid point, however that is the whole idea of checking a
users html before it can be submitted. I can see Transitional is not a
popular choice, and i am considering changing to strict, however the main
thrust here is it will be impossible for the author to end up causing the
system to send mal-formed html to the reader. If on submission there are
problems, the suthor will be alerted of this, in the same way as the w3c
parser informs you of errors, and they will be able to correct them before
trying to submit their page again.
I think the main decision here is what to get the parser testing for....
Strict or Transitional, and I think based on the answers here I have made
the choice of strict (less work on the parser too as it already supports
strict).
>> Also Strict requires all style type elements to use a style sheet.
>
> Not true, although in most cases it's advisable to use a style sheet
> rather than stuffing CSS back into the HTML file. That's simply good
> web engineering practice.
>
>> While I do have a style sheet, in the CMS permissions settings it
>> will be impossible for users to modify this to allow them to
>> properly conform to HTML Strict if they wish to change certain
>> things about the way their pages look.
>
> Sounds like premature optimisation to me. You haven't yet finished
> the discussion - but already you've set hard and fast rules about how
> the system is going to work?
>
>> Thanks for the general heads up on the origins of transitional
>> however - I am trying to use strict in all my non-CMS based sites :)
>
> To me I have to say this makes no kind of sense - on the WWW the key
> factor is what you're serving out to the reader -- whereas, just how
> you create that, internally, is your own affair, but the result has to
> be meaningful. So decide the end result (which nowadays should surely
> be strict or something very close to it, with CSS for presentation)
> and then make sure you use appropriate tools for creating it.
Under ordinary circumsnatnces I would agree entirely, and I am trying to put
the cart before the horse as much as I can, however my CMS is in fact being
integrated with a system already in place which has the restrictions I speak
of (runs in Transitional etc.)
It is not beyond the realms of possibility to check for 4.01 strict for
authors submissions, and so that is what I have decided to do. This should
mean the reader encounters only valid HTML.
> This is surely easier with a content management system than it is with
> hand-knitted pages...
Very much so!
> How you deal with fogies who insist on creating legacy HTML/3.2-like
> stuff is not my problem, but I'd have to say they are only storing up
> trouble for the future, for themselves and for your web site. That
> unwanted crud from 5-7 years back is now past history, thank goodness,
> and (newly-made) web sites are better off without it. With *very* few
> exceptions.
Agreed - that's why I am making sure early on to include a parser that
checks all submissions and makes them conform to a standard, which looks set
to be 4.01 Strict. That way people will be forced to write HTML that is
acceptable to readers.
Many thanks for your help in this, all very useful input!
Kieran
| 
XML Sitemap