XHTML · Grey Nicholson

Reorderiffic

2004-07-22T14:58:00+00:00

The Blurb is now above the main content in the site's source and thus also in Toliman - it makes more sense that way.

I didn't even need to modify Arcturus to retain its layout. As you were.

Don't hash those numbers!

2004-06-21T21:30:00+00:00

I just remembered XHTML ids aren't allowed to begin with numbers, so it's probably not a good idea to give weblog entries permalinks like mine.

Never mind - they'll all be breaking soon anyway (I know - Atom sacrilege, but until URNs work better it's sometimes gonna be unavoidable).

Hash those hs!

2004-06-21T13:55:00+00:00

A quick request of everyone who writes web pages, especially weblogs, or who designs web page templates:

Give every heading an id, so that other folks (and you) can link to sections of an article or entry.

It's not quite Purple Numbers but it does the job more than effectively (and it's not half as overkilly). I reckon it's fair to assume that if someone wants to link to a part of your page in another page, they'll have the ability to view your page's source and find the ids. And if they can't, purple numbers would probably befuddle them anyway.

I do it automatically - it really takes little effort. Another point is to use proper titles, not #title4, so that if you add a chunk, nothing will break (and referring urls look much friendlier).

On-the-fly page validation

2004-06-01T18:15:00+00:00

I wonder if this is possible. I've been dabbling with JavaScript a little recently, in order to produce The Twaddle's Expletatron and this seems like something that should be possible with JS:

I want a script that can load up a given remote page (internally - I don't want to display the page, just to extract info from it), look at an element on that page with a given id, and return its class as a variable.

What's this got to do with validation? Well say the remote page was http://validator.w3.org/check/referer and the given id was result. Then, if the returned variable is valid (i.e. the class of that element is valid) you've got a valid page; if the returned variable isn't valid you haven't.

So, you could, using JavaScript, whack in a “Valid XHTML” logo if, and only if, the page is actually valid. If you like, you could throw in an “Invalid!” image if the page is not valid.

I know it's possible to refer to an element by its id; I know it's possible to get the content of that element. I don't know if it's possible to get an element's class, and I'm guessing it's slightly impossible to do all this for another, remote page.

It'd be nice though.

IE + XML + XSL + XHTML + W3C = Get In!

2004-04-23T14:07:00+00:00

As a prelude to some major back-end renovation I'm planning for The Twaddle, I decided to see if I could get Internet Explorer 6 to display this XSL-ified weblog nicely, not accounting for IE-unsupported CSS (which is already taken care of at The Twaddle). Previously, IE displayed the DOCTYPE declaration as plain text at the top of the page; using strategic HTML commenting, I've managed to prevent it from doing so.

Actually, I bet simply removing the DOCTYPE declaration wouldn't affect either Gecko or IE's rendering of the page, as I think XML kicks both of them into standards mode anyway.

The next step is to try this with some of The Twaddle. And I'd probably best check Opera's effort, too.

April Fool!

2004-04-01T20:40:00+00:00

Only kidding - it's not really.

Last Wednesday (the 24th) we “relaunched” The Twaddle. In fact, the only change made to the XHTML was the addition of unique page id's - something I've always done on Mooquackwooftweetmeow but never used. The rest of the jiggery and/or pokery was accomplished using just CSS and a few Google Image Searches - a testament to the power of CSS and the excellence of my XHTMLing.

We've also got some nicely foolish spiel on the front page about The Twaddle shutting up shop. In case the date of March 32nd, and the Can you say April Fool? message at the bottom of the page didn't tell you: it's an April Fool, fool. And finally, we've screwed with the forums' word filter, replacing innocuous conjunctions with words such as cheese and Alan Shearer - see http://thetwaddle.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=atrium&action=display&num=1080773096 for the complete damage assessment.

Apostrophes

2004-03-15T16:10:00+00:00

I'm now using the aforementioned RSS Reader to read this weblog. So it has to be valid Atom, the content must validate when RSSified, and still validate when XHTMLified. Thus, to save hassle relating to escape characters and other such technicalities, I'm now using straight apostrophes as “quotes”. It's ugly, but it works.

Update: with the advent of the Mooquackwhatnotbot I'm now using proper HTML quotes - <q> and </q>. The usual disclaimer about Internet Explorer's crapness applies, as does one about Atom feed readers - they probably won't show any quotes.

Isn't XML wonderful?

2004-02-20T19:15:00+00:00

Despite an hour of valiant effort, I've been unable to convince Gecko to render XHTML embedded in an Atom feed. I've tried encoding the arrow brackets, various namespace trickery... to no avail. So you're gonna have to put up with plain text URLs, until someone can show me how it's done... anybody?

Namespaces are fairly fun

2004-02-19T18:30:00+00:00

The Feed Validator (http://feedvalidator.org) gave me a thumbs-down :( Entries' IDs have to be valid URLs, you see, and I'd been using them as arbitrary labels. I'd also been leeching off these arbitrary labels in order to create anchors in the XHTML representation of the feed; those using a web browser can check they work by clicking this item's title; those using a news aggregator can visit the alternate link; in both cases, the item's title should be at the very top of the browser window.

I managed to circumvent Atom's rigidity using XML's flexibility - I invented a new arbitrary label for each item - label, under my own namespace; I now have everything working as before, plus a valid feed. Glory!

I think I'll go and play a bit of pool now...

Freewebs aren't very good at MIME types

2004-02-19T15:30:00+00:00

Freewebs is obviously designed to cater for “webmasters” who've never heard of Jeffrey Zeldman... Like most, if not all, free web hosts, Freewebs use filename “extensions” to determine what MIME type to serve for a file; this is OK, until they get it wrong. Granted, Atom and XSL aren't the most commonly used file formats on the web but nonetheless Freewebs could bother serving them with the proper MIME types.

A few months ago, I asked them if they could serve .xhtml files as XHTML rather than plain text. They responded by saying they wanted to comply with web standards; could I please send them the reference to the W3C recommendation. Great! ...except that nothing's happened since (or at least they haven't told me about it if anything has) - a couple of weeks ago I checked and .xhtml files were still being served as plain text.

I'd appeal to Freewebs now, except I suspect they use Internet Explorer, and thus won't be able to read this...

Copy and paste...

2004-02-19T14:30:00+00:00

By the way, those URLs in the previous post are just plain text; unless your browser parses plain text URLs, you're just gonna have to copy and paste them for now - I'm not an XML expert and the prospect of digging about trying to force Atom and XHTML to work together to produce links, isn't appealing... maybe later.