Review of the Presidential Web Sites' HTML 198
Crispen writes, "My dad, the Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen, recently reviewed the presidential candidates' Web sites. He didn't review their style, mind you -- he reviewed their HTML.
If you are looking for one of the most revealing (and humorous) commentaries about the current U.S. presidential race, take a look."
Closing </i> tag missing in this story (Score:5)
whoo-hoo Harry Browne has least errors (Score:2)
Re:Closing </i> tag missing in this story (Score:2)
What's with peoples' idiotic HTML anyway? <I>?! Whatever happened to <EM>?
HTML is not a style markup language... Is Malda trying to do his best impression of Front-Page?
So this is what he means by "Open Source" ? (Score:5)
"Thanks for checking out our source code! I plan to use this space to post
special messages to those who are helping to improve our web site -- by making
our source code the best it can be. The fact that you are peeking behind the
scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet
effort. I'm grateful for your help and support in this campaign. Now let's
keep working to build the 21st Century of our dreams!
Al Gore"
Learning from the best (Score:5)
HTML gone wrong (Score:3)
At the end of the day, if its readable with the browser; thats all it ever needed to be - is there any real need to go nit-picking?
On the other hand it can only ever be good nettiquet to, if you find unworkable HTML, inform the webmaster so he make his page available to everyone.......
If you really want to generate your own unspeakably bad HTML, go to this [microsoft.com] page and look for information on this little companys' HTML editor, you'll probably (not) be surprised at how much you have to pay for it
Please do not check my [mailto] HTML cos i've already checked it and it is definately cr*p
Re:whoo-hoo Harry Browne has least errors (Score:1)
Re:So this is what he means by "Open Source" ? (Score:1)
Roblimo for President (Score:1)
Or not... (Score:1)
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
Re:Or not... (Score:1)
Re:HTML gone wrong (Score:2)
But that's the problem. Buggy HTML means it won't be visible to all browsers. Few people are even aware of any browsers other than Netscape and IE, and so assume that if the page looks OK in those, it must be fine. People using Lynx are shafted, along with those using numerous other browsers that don't implement Netscape/IE extensions.
More Complete Listing of Party/Candidate Websites (Score:5)
Official political party sites
Democratic National Committee [democrats.org]
Democratic Socialists of America [dsausa.org]
Green Parties of North America [greens.org]
Labor Party [igc.org]
Libertarian Party [lp.org]
Natural Law Party [natural-law.org]
Reform Party [reformparty.org]
Republican National Committee [rnc.org]
Socialist Party USA [sp-usa.org]
Workers Party [workersparty.org]
Official candidate sites
Gary Bauer [bauer2k.com]
Bill Bradley [billbradley.com]
Pat Buchanan [gopatgo2000.org]
George W. Bush [georgewbush.com]
Steve Forbes [forbes2000.com]
Al Gore [algore2000.com]
Orrin Hatch [orrinhatch.org]
Alan Keyes [keyes2000.org]
John McCain [mccain2000.com]
Donald Trump [donaldjtrump2000.com]
Btw, not everyone's still running. Get involved in politics. Change the course of history. Can anyone get a candidates position of support or non-support concerning the DeCSS-DVD-MPAA issue? Interesting to see Gore running Linux, and Bradley and him using Apache. And though McCain may not be on MS, he does have some skeletons in the proverbial web-closet: McCain pay-chat a Microsoft affair [zdnet.com]
Slashdot Code a little scrappy (Score:4)
Re:Or not... (Score:1)
Blood ´n Gore (Score:1)
Yeah, and dont forget that he invented the Internet!
/Dervak
Re:He should know. . . (Score:1)
_________________________
Is Lynx still valid (Score:1)
While I believe that ALT tags should be mandatory for other reasons (ie the blind or just when you don't want to wait for images) we are going to hold back advances and slow development time if we keep catering for _very_ old browsers. Especially if this is only for a very small % of users.
Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?
Candidate for hire? (Score:4)
But what gets me is how many of them are in the commercial comain, .com Does that mean you can buy them? 'Hi, I'm Al Gore, and I'm
running this candidacy as a commercial operation...'Lynx Friendly? (Score:3)
No joke. Often, I like using a simple browser to cut through the fancy schmancy graphics and get down to the text message. Its what humans speak.
Many times I surf the int-r-net from a Wyse-60 terminal under lynx and appreciate getting just the facts. A little formatting is nice and a bit of confusion is expected, but what I saw on georgewbush.com was jibberish that only Ronald Regan could mumble off:
[nav_shadow_rt_mid.gif]
[nav_shadow_left_mid.gif] [ISMAP:nav_youth.gif]-[USEMAP:nav_youth.gif]
[nav_shadow_rt_mid.gif]
[nav_shadow_left_mid.gif]btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes) btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes) btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes)
What is his message? Between all that I can see a secret message in there. He wants money.
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:1)
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
* I connect throught telnet into a host that have inet access from one that doesn't
* I use a X-less linux (quite often)
* I need to solve a chicken/egg problem to get web access (for instance, OmniWeb betas, the OPENSTEP browser come with a limited license. When it expires, you cannot launch it. And the only way to get the updated beta is to use http.
* I have a sloppy connection and need to get something (often a driver)
* I want to read pages/documentation offline from a terminal
* I'm tired of those animated gifs, those crappy colored background, those stupid text colors. It is amazing the amount of information you can display readabily in text mode on a 132x60 screen.
* I want to browse without spreading cookies everywhere
Cheers,
--fred
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:5)
Absolutely. I use it because it's so much faster than Netscape. At the end of the day, I'm rarely interested in how good the graphics are on a site, I'm after the content. I still have Netscape around, and use it for sites where the graphic content is important, but there's a place for both.
It's also not a case of actively supporting Lynx (or any other browser, for that matter). Any HTML 4.0 compliant page should be easily visible in any browser, including Lynx (yes, few current browsers fully implement HTML 4.0 yet, but they're getting there). What part of Lynx support do you think holds back advances? I'm not advocating support for Mosaic or Chimera, I'm merely hoping for standards compliant web pages. If I choose to use a browser that doesn't implement certain aspects of a page (e.g., images) that should be my choice.
Lynx is also great for those of us that have to do dial in support. When your only connection to the internet is through an 80x24 telnet window, and you *need* to check some details in order to fix a customer's problem, Netscape and IE aren't an option.
Hand written (Score:2)
If anyone would like to review my code, please take a look at the website I manage...
Artane Senior Band [artaneseniorband.org] web page
T.
"My Plan" by Al Gore (Score:1)
To quote Anthrax, "The Devil lives in California".
Californians are evil hypocrites. There are three major populations in California: Homosexuals ("Gays"), Vegans, and Mexicans. Let's discuss each one, and how they contribute to the hypocrisy that is "California".
Homosexuals love California. Hell, it's got "fornicate" right in the name! Well, sort of. Anyway, Californians battle for gay rights, which pretty much means the right to bugger your fellow man, then stick your tongue up his ass and lick out the semen.
Vegans are yuppies that wish they were hippies that wish they had jobs. They fight to keep animals (which eat other animals) from being eaten by an animal, called the human being.
Mexicans come from Mexico, a heathen nation to our south. They are part of a communist plot to take jobs away from good heterosexual, meat-eating Americans.
Now let's talk about the hypocrisy. Vegans are allied with the Gays. Vegans say that people shouldn't eat meat, but also say that Gays should be able to stick their meat wherever they like. Ahem. Gays eat meat on a regular basis, but there are Vegan Gays! It starts to get confusing. It's the hypocrisy, stupid.
I'm not sure where the Mexicans fit in exactly, but I do know that Gay Mexicans fit into each other quite nicely.
When I am elected President, I will hit the Calfornia state line with enough nukes so that the wasteland of Gay Vegan Mexicans breaks off and floats out into the Pacific. We will tow Hawaii over and staple it in California's place. Don't worry, folks; although similar in appearance to a Mexican, the Hawaiian is actually a cross-breed Asian, guaranteed to fuel America's much needed Technical and Convenience Store industries! And as demonstrated by the tradtional "luau", Hawaiians love to eat meat. So it all works out in the end!
Thanks for your time.
God Bless,
Al Gore
Inventor of the Internet
Linux and Gore... (Score:3)
Remember, Al-Gorithms drive the net...perhaps there is more to his claim of creation than meets the eye...
rootrot
These guys are morons... (Score:1)
My code in't perfect, but it's all hand-made, and I try really hard to stick to the guidelines. These guys (and their site developers) don't have a clue.
On the other hand, I have to concede that we've come to expect that our politicians will all be incompetent, so it's no surprise that they hire incompetent staff....
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
You're missing some stuff (Score:2)
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
"IMG" tags and "alt" (Score:1)
When people use sensible HTML, Lynx is a very impressive web browser.
Get back to work:) (Score:2)
Re:Hand written (Score:2)
Not too bad but you really should have a DTD.
You might be interested in studying the HTML 4.01 specs [w3.org] and cascading style sheets [w3.org] to learn how to write clean HTML without ugly hacks like BODY attributes and formatting with line breaks.
Unfortunately, many browsers don't implement CSS very well. IE, Mozilla, and Opera do pretty well and Netscape is so-so, but older versions of all of them will suck... Nevertheless, CSS is the way to go. HTML was never meant as a style markup language, and you should use tags that reflect content rather than presentation (<em> instead of <i>); use CSS for fancy stuff, it really is easier and better once you get into it.
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:1)
Sure.   Alot of folks who manage *BSD servers find that they don't need X, along with others who just prefer the command line, thank you.   You also have alot of folks out there with older 386/486 machines with small drives or who run the tiny Linux distros on floppies only, and thus may not have the space to install X, but still want to be able to browse the web unhindered.
Because of those who still want/need a text-based browser and because I'm sensitive to that, I support the Campaign for a Non-Browser Specific WWW [anybrowser.org].   I really think that this is the way to go, ie., stop making sites that are optimized for one type of browser or can only be read by one browser.   Give folks the option to NOT have to accept cookies to visit (ie., don't force them - you drive away a whole bevy of customers by doing that).
This browser "campaign" site also points to pages that show you how to design a site that can still be spiffy for graphical browsers while also being READABLE by text-based ones.
Support this movement!
I now step down off my platform.   Thank you.   Thank you.
Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test. (Score:1)
Please tell me you're joking...
On second thought, you're pretty damn funny either way.
Cool. (Score:1)
Geneva is not a Microsoft font (Score:1)
The only web page editor I can think of that's that horrible is... but wait -- what's this? --
<FONT face="verdana,tahoma,geneva,arial" size=1 color="#ffcc66">
All Microsoft fonts. Could this be evidence of a cover-up?
Geneva is not a Microsoft font. It's an Apple font.Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! (Score:1)
Another great reason to vote for a candidate (Score:2)
Man of strong character? Nope.
Runs his website on Linux? THATS MY MAN
Maybe voters should do what they did last time and vote for the cute guy
Capitalized tags (Score:2)
For the forward-looking:
The W3C's XHTML 1.0 spec [w3.org] states in part:
Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! (Score:1)
Re:Candidate for hire? (Score:1)
I think we call that 'Special Interest Groups'...
Seriously, isn't a commercial operation? They take in money (fund-raising, bribes, donations, etc.) and spend money (advertising, fund-raisers, etc.). You can even extend it to saying that they promise a return on investment. You 'pay' them with donations, and if you're lucky, you get a good president.
-Ravagin
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"
Re:Candidate for hire? (Score:1)
I'm amazed (Score:1)
I'm surprised the commies weren't hung, drawn and quatered
Doesn't it require a lot of cash to stand in a US election? How many votes do the minority parties get?
Re:"IMG" tags and "alt" (Score:1)
Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test. (Score:1)
Maybe, but do they use IE? Almost 50% of the WWW populace uses Netscape for their daily browsing, and those people are not going to be happy about you telling them that they have to switch browsers to watch your page.
It may be somewhat sound business logic to only really care about IE and Netscape, but only IE is plain stupid.
.com, .org, and .net mean NOTHING (Score:1)
The fact is, a majority of the electorate gets confused when they see an address that ISN'T
tables -- laugh and a half (Score:1)
And it's followed by what may be the single longest table in captivity. So you sit there for hours (it seems) waiting for anything but a white screen to show up.
Has this guy done a review of Slashdot's scandalous HTML recently? Particularly the tables that put Bush's baby almost-tables under the table?
FYI (Score:2)
It's quite simple--Albore lives in the USSA, where RSA is patented and mod_ssl is illegal to use for commercial purposes (such as campaign fund-raising). Raven comes with a commercial RSA license, which you can never buy alone (trust me, I've tried).
What I generally do for normal commercial sites I set up in the USSA is use mod_ssl and have a shiny shrink-wrapped copy of Red Hat's Secure Web Server with it and hope that, if busted, I can claim the RSA license in the RH Server covers the RSA in the mod_ssl (I use RH because it *is* mod_ssl and because it's cheaper
I wouldn't dream of doing that for a presidential campaign web site though--the bad press if we were charged and lost would be hard to deal with.
Re:Closing </i> tag missing in this story (Score:2)
Re:You're missing some stuff (Score:1)
And yeah, maybe one of these days I'll remember to put in that declaration...
T.
Re:Candidate for hire? (Score:1)
.net - They aren't network providers.
.mil - They aren't part of the military.
.org - They aren't non-profit or not-for-profit organizations.
.edu - I don't think the politicians can honestly claim that they are educational. This one's out.
.gov - Hmmm. This one makes sense, at least for those that currently hold a position in government.
.us - Yes. This is the most underutilized domain on the 'net. This is where politicians running for national office belong. Furthermore, for state elections, there's always the XX.us domains. Unfortunately, the
.com - Well, if you want to be practical, this is the only place left for politicians. Sorry, but this is exactly where they belong...
-dan
Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test. (Score:2)
I think Troll was probably a bit harsh. Even if you were, it is an opinion held by a lot of people, but Moderators will moderate.
Lynx does not even display the banner ads
I see your point. And that is a reasonably sound business reason to ignore Lynx. What I find irritating is that a lot of companies selling products have sites that need Shockwave. How much effort do they think I'm willing to go to for a company that doesn't think it should cater to me? A lot of people have to download the latest version of shockwave, and this means they need to stop and resstart their browser (Or is this just under Unix?) Which is also a problem.
All that matters is that 99.7% of our target demographic has access to the de-facto standard - IE4
Including me when I'm at work. It requires me to search through a list of menus for a program that does essentially the same as Netscape just to view a page in which it benefits YOU for me to look at it. If you aren't interested in my custom then I'm not interested in your product.
those that do not are not worth spending my client's money on. Its basic business logic.
But it doesn't cost more to develop a site that works on more browsers. You don't need to create one site per browser. Most of the time all you need to do is load it onto a browser and fix a handful of minor bugs. Anyone who doesn't do this is cutting down the number of visitors for a trivial saving in costs.
Re:These guys are morons... (Score:2)
I'm sure they'd be happy to have you volunteer to fix all their problems. It's unlikely that anyone gets paid to work on these sites...
Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! NOT! (Score:3)
There isn't a Slashdot Giveaway
This is a bored individual who enjoys misleading people and generating unnecessary email.
Official VA promotions will always be posted on the VA Linux website. [valinux.com]
Sorry for the confusion that has been created.
--Kit
Whatever. (Score:1)
What a loser.
Anyway,
IGGY POP FOR PRESIDENT! (about as good a choice as any)
Libertarian (Score:2)
WOO! Go Libertarians! 7 Errors! How many do you think that they would make as president? And BSD! At least if Browne starts sleeping around and we have a nice little scandal, we'll know that he's better in bed than those NT candidates
Re:Why the french are idiots. (Score:1)
French intelligence? What an oxymoron...
--
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:1)
Lynx 2.8.2 dates from June 1999 so it's def'ly newer than Netscape. All other arguments about
"Best viewed with any browser" have been uttered before here.
Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! (Score:1)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:2)
If I recall correctly, "officially" running for president is merely a matter signing up with the FEC. This won't get you on the ballot, though. In that, the restrictions vary wildly by state. In some states, the restrictions are bad enough that only the two major parties get on. In others, pretty much any party who signs up gets on. In my state (California), we tend to have the following parties on the ballot:
When you register to vote, you pick on of these, or you can choose "Independent" (No party. Not to be confused with "American Independent", which is a party) or "Decline to State". Something like 1/3 of the population is independent, up quite a bit recently.
Usually, the total vote for all but the first two parties is somewhere between 5 and 10%. However, the press blackout of minor parties is so bad, that the media typically reports only the totals for the two parties.
As part of an earlier effort at "campaign finance reform", candidates get an extra dollar for every dollar they raise ("matching funds") assuming their party got more the somewhere between 5 and 15% of the vote. (I don't recall which, exactly.) Obviously this boosts the major parties and marginalizes the fringe parties. Also, the American public, for some unknown reason, only regards those candidates that the press annoints. In this election, they've annointed just four, and report as if there are only four men running, despite the fact that the sample ballot for the primary election coming up in California I just received has twenty people listed as running for President.
Anyway, this media blackout of minor candidates is mostly what causes the cash requirement. Unless you spend a fortune advertising, you won't get mentioned on the news.
Finally, in most elections, you actually have the right to vote for anyone who meets the eligibility requirements. A "write-in" candidacy. I could, for example, demand a write in ballot next november and vote for myself for president. (I'll turn 35 in August. Remember that, voters.) Write-ins are rare, but not unheard of. San Francisco had a well-publicized write-in candidacy that succeeded in forcing a run-off last year in its mayors race.
(Oh, and the "American Communist Party" still exists, as far as I know, but is so weak as to be a joke and has been since before WWII.)
Re:Candidate for hire? (Score:1)
Actually, I think they are supposed to be non-profit. Though with either Gore or Bush, it is hard to tell.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:2)
But that doesn't matter, because in the US, presidents aren't elected by popular vote, anyway.
Re:Hand written (Score:1)
Nothing beats VI *smile*
Especially if you use something like Weblint [weblint.org]
What I don't understand is why the hell this HTML stuff is being posted on
--
B10m
Re:tables -- laugh and a half (Score:1)
Re:Blood ´n Gore (Score:1)
Correction... (Score:2)
At the time, that message said something to the effect of
Thanks for checking out our source code! We believe in community participation in making our HTML code better -- it's OPEN SOURCE -- yadda yadda...
That's very paraphrased, but I did find it funny that the statement really did have "OPEN SOURCE" in all caps, like it was specifically targeted to get the attention of the geek community. Eventually, somebody probably told Gore or his webmaster that the concept of "open source HTML" doesn't make much sense.
Go AL! (Score:2)
Al is the only one using Linux and Apache (SSL/PHP EVEN!)
Also he (or more likely one of this web designers hide some stuff in the html source, now that is just fun for everyone.
Al Gore also invented the Internet, making all this possiable, as for me I am putting my vote on the Gore man. Geek vote counts, vote Al Gore because Al Gore voted Linux (in his choice of web server).
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:1)
This sort of thing always amazes me. I once had to install Microsoft IE on a laptop that didn't have it (don't ask) and discovered that the only way I could do it was to first download Netscape using ftp, and then use that to download IE. Microsoft has an FTP site, but doesn't seem to bother to put newer versions of their software there.
Which is another huge pet-peeve of mine. As someone who does a lot of downloading over a telnet connection, it really ticks me off when people want you to use http to download software. Make a link to an ftp site!
Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test. (Score:1)
Let's presume for the moment, just for laughs, that this entire thread isn't just a completely fraudulent troll.
> Our logging information shows that 81% of attempted connects
> from IP addresses claiming to be running Netscape, re-connect
> later using IE4 or IE5.
Brilliant! So you're willing to throw away 19 percent of one fairly large subset of your employers's potential customers? Who did you say you work for? I'm sure they'd be interested in knowing how you're willing to chase off lots of paying customers simply because you're too sleepy and/or incompetent to add a few lines of HTML to your web pages. A few lines of HTML that my twelve year old daughter could knock out in a text editor, while at the same time talking on the phone and watching TV, in about fifteen seconds flat.
Oh yeah, you're posting as an Anonymous Coward. I can understand why. Unemployment sucks. I wouldn't want to lose my job either.
Actually, as far as you screwing your employers, I'm all for it. I hate capitalism and I hate capitalists and I figure they deserve to get fscked over by lazy slackers like you. If they're going to sequester all the surplus value, why should you work any harder than the minimum you can get away with?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:whoo-hoo Harry Browne has least errors (Score:1)
Minor parties votes in 1996 (Score:1)
H. Ross Perot, for the Reform Party, got eight million votes, Ralph Nader, for the Green Party, got about two-thirds of a million votes including mine (I just couldn't pull the lever for that worm Clinton a second time), Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party got about a half-million votes, and Earl F. Dodge of the Prohibition Party got 1,298 votes.
See http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/summ.htm [fec.gov] for exact figures.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Al Gores's odd composer (Score:2)
It's probably fair to say that some of this cruft is an artifact of platform conversion, some due to the original composition software, and of course, the author. But they did solicit feedback. Have you sent any?
Re:HTML gone wrong (Score:1)
That depends on whether you think that HTML is a piss-poor page layout and description language for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer or whether its a simple but fairly decent structural markup language.
Yes, it's true that almost every Web site uses a debased and twisted form of HTML that emerged as a result of the browser wars, and yes, probably more than 99.9% of HTML documents fail to validate against any W3C DTD, but that doesn't mean that the practice should be encouraged. It is possible to do lots of interesting and useful things with well-structured HTML documents, and though most indexers, user agents and Web servers don't do most of these things, there's no reason to simply give up on well-structured HTML; on the contrary, if enough HTML was done right by people who understand what they're doing, maybe the tools to support some of these capabilities would become more widespread.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could search Google or AltaVista and return not just the title of a document, but a structured outline of its content as well (and then be able to retrieve only the section of the document that you want instead of having to retrieve the whole thing and pick through it)? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to search for keywords that appear only in titles and headings rather than picking up random words in the body? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have your browser read a big HTML document and then auto-generate a hyperlinked table of contents for that document, as well as a table of tables, charts, figures and images (all labelled, no less)? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to take a huge HTML document (say an entire book) and automatically split it into, say, chapters based on the structure of the document? Wouldn't it be nice to display a list of all the hyperlinks in a document that lead to other documents without having a list that reads "click here, click here, click here"?
All of these things and a whole lot more are possible with well-structured documents, but with HTML used the way it is, all you can do with it is look at it, and usually only if you have a pair of good eyes and a graphical browser. If you're blind or are trying to access the Web through a text terminal, cell phone or Palm Pilot, you find that you are effectively cut off from a lot of the Web because HTML has been used as a Netscape/IE page description language, resulting in information that is otherwise unusable.
Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! NOT! (Score:1)
What gives, rob, the crew? Is this a bug, or a "feature" for Kit Cosper?
Just curious...
-ed fisher.
Re:Linux and Gore... (Score:1)
More telling is McCain and Bradley on Solaris, McCain with Apache and Bradley with Netscape. Both are very solid platforms with Bradley being just a little more Open and McCain being just a little more conservative. Geez! It's like reading tea leaves!
As for George W. I'm not surprised by his tea leaves at all.
-M
Re:Hand written (Score:1)
Tables are used throughout the site, including on the main page (the one after the front page). Did you actually look at the rest of the site? And remember, a browser cannot display the contents of a table until the full table has loaded. A site can look very bad if a table is too big - especially on slower (modem!) links.
However, thank you for the comments.
T.
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:1)
(I don't use Lynx.) You don't have to "support" it, but if your page looks less than 100% perfect with Lynx, then you probably have some big problems that are going to annoy a lot of people, whether those people use Lynx or not. So it might be a good tool to have around for testing. When you use it, think of it as just another way to find problems, rather than a way to be compatable specifically with Lynx.
Don't cater to any browsers; cater to HTML spec. The browsers will take care of themselves. As for advances, well, many of the things that are labelled as "advances" (e.g. Shockwave, Javascript, etc) are retro and have held back the web, so it's hard to avoid being skeptical when people talk about advances.
Imagine if Netscape had not ever gotten away with adding typesetting "features" to HTML. Style sheets would be in widespread use by now. Beware "advances"; they can damage the webscape for years.
---
Re:Closing </i> tag missing in this story (Score:1)
Validation by http://validator.w3.org [w3.org]: 235 errors
Rob Malda For President!
New standard for user-unfriendliness (Score:2)
Bush lays his use of Front Page out there and says, so what? -- and that who-cares attitude is also reflected in his web page which sets a new standard for user-unfriendliness. Even on a SPARC with the entire page in cache, it still takes over 20 seconds for Netscape to show you anything but a blank white page.
I can't believe the guy has the gall to blame the suckiness of Netscape on the web site. Particularly Netscape under Unix, which is god-awful slow on every web site.
--
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
No one should write their pages specifically for lynx: but then they shouldn't for IE or NS either. If you write your web pages in a flexible manner, more people will find the content easy to access (and not just people: also hits bringing web crawlers).
xhtml (Score:2)
Incidentally, anyone know where a good comprehensive xhtml tutorial would be? Or a good xhtml WYSIWYG editor?
--
grappler
Re:Me for president (Score:1)
Re:Linux and Gore... (Score:2)
Isn't it amazing what people will believe if they hear it repeated by spin-meisters enough times. A little background on the "Gore invents Internet" story, courtesy of the Daily Howler archive (www.dailyhowler.com) for 3-26-99:
[begin quote]
Did Vice President Gore "invent the Internet?" Better yet: Did he say that he did? Here is what the VP said when he chatted with Wolf on March 9:
GORE: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
And of course Gore did take the lead, within the Congress, in promoting and advancing the technical developments that have led to our now-beloved Net. Here's what Internet guru Vinton Cerf told the Post's John Schwartz:
SCHWARTZ: Vinton G. Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI Worldcom and the person most often called "the father of the Internet" for his part in designing the network's common computer language, said in an e-mail interview yesterday, "I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator."
According to Schwartz, Katie Hafner, co-author of a history of the Internet, "agreed" with that assessment:
SCHWARTZ: Hafner said people have been haggling over the true beginnings of the network for decades. "...[T]here are so many people who did at least one pivotal thing in either creating the network, or encouraging the use of the network, or bringing the network to the public--and Gore was one of those people."
William Greider wrote this, in a Rolling Stone profile published before the recent flap:
GREIDER: [Gore] held the first congressional hearings on industry's casual disposal of toxic wastes and on global warming, and he was an early champion of the system we now call the Internet.
Chuck Raasch, of USA Today, quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Dave Farber, whom Schwartz described as "one of the early players in the Internet:"
RAASCH: Dave Farber, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told [The Commercial Appeal of Memphis], "Gore did not technically create the Internet, but without him there is a good chance it would not be where it is today."
Indeed, when Gore made his initial statement March 9, it produced no comments in the press corps. On Wednesday, March 10, and on Thursday, March 11 not a word was written. Even in the Washington Times, a paper which lives for Clinton-Gore scandal, not a single word appeared about what the VP had said.
But to many within this celebrity press corps, it's just not a day without scandal. And as we've often shown you before, the scribes just love being handed spin, and rushing it right into print! And that's exactly how the Great Gore Scandal took the nation on Friday, March 12, as obedient pundits recited spin they'd been handed by historian Richard Armey.
We're not quite sure who invented the fax, but Armey sure knows how to use it. He sends out messages of dubious accuracy, and pundits just type them right up! For the pundits, it's a whole lot simpler than going out and spending their time doing real reporting! And Armey's stuff has pre-packaged panache, the kind that those editors simply love!
And so it was that, starting on Friday, the nation's press was full of experts, spinning remarkably similar tales about how the Net had begun.
[end quote]
To anyone not familiar with Daily Howler, I recommend it highly. It "reviews", in a relatively non-partisan fashion, the press's failings in covering the current campaign. It doesn't provide "answers", so much as it points out what questions the press ought to be asking -- but isn't.
Michael Kerpan
Re:I'm amazed (Score:1)
Of course, that's officially. I'm running for president.
I can't officially run for president, because I'm only 21, but people can still vote for me by writing in.
later
Andover has issues also :) (Score:3)
AndoverNews [andovernews.com]
This is just too funny.
------
IanO
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones (Score:1)
Chicken, Egg, NT, IE, aieee!!! (Score:4)
I'm no zealot. I use Linux/Netscape for most things, but I think IE 5 is one of the best graphical browsers for stability and speed on any platform. However, the fact that 2.0 can't access www.microsoft.com suggests some serious issues on both ends.
--
Oh no! The dreaded HTML thread! (Score:2)
Shouldn't slashdot be a big enough tent to hold HTML bigots and HTML slackers? ;-)
Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen
Bushes site least secure (Score:2)
is shorter than (Score:2)
OS/Server software much more interesting (Score:3)
Note: George W. Bush, Pat Buchanan, and this "Erik Thompson" are all running IIS on NT4.
Chris Hagar
Bill Bradley's Site.... (Score:2)
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
Wrong. My blind friends prefer IE over Lynx, as navigating with Lynx is much more difficult. Major problems with Lynx: frames and forms, although the latter is difficult on IE as well.
-- Abigail
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
Yes. Not because it's Lynx, but if your webpages are geared towards a specific display (and then you might as well have used a medium other than HTML), your pages won't be useful in many other situations. Text-based browsers are not old technology, nor used by poor people who cannot afford a decent PC (as many people designing commercial websites believe). Handheld devices (like some Nokia phones) and certain cars (some expensive German cars have this option) have web browsing capabilities, without the pictures. And then there's the (UK based) 'www-by-phone' service. And let's not forget the indexers and web-spiders. Scooter and friends are blind.
-- Abigail
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
While it is true that Lynx can be "joined" with software to read out text aloud, it's a myth to believe IE or Netscape can't. There's pretty decent (Windows based) software out there that reads out anything that uses fonts. Including IE.
-- Abigail
Re:Whatever. (Score:2)
Which makes him a big hypocrite, as the web page has at the top:
META NAME="GENERATOR" Content="Visual Page 2.0 for Windows"
-- Abigail
Let him fix his own HTML first... (Score:2)
Some serious problems with Rev. Bob HTML:
Rev. Bob is a big hypocrite, and slashdot shouldn't have lowered itself to publishing a story about it.
-- Abigail
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
on just those pages that sighted readers obtain dismal results with
lynx.
I am sorry if I suggested that NS and IE *can't* be used with such
software, though in my limited experience, it is more common to use
leaner browsers such as lynx with these tools.
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
Nope. If you write good HTML, Lynx, search engines, and the deaf will take care of themselves. You can concentrate on supporting graphical browsers by adding stuff on for them.
Yes, i know, HTML isn't perfect (i'm not blaming anyone in particular), and doing so will limit you from some (usually annoying) site designs. If you want to use one of those (usually annoying) site designs....
cheers,
sklein
Re:Is Lynx still valid (Score:2)
I have several close friends that are blind. All of them use IE, and only one sometimes uses Lynx. IE's superior formatting compared to Lynx makes that the blind people I know prefer IE. Frames and forms are the biggest problem.
-- Abigail