h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

because I would be repeating 99% of what you have already said - I just do not see the point of h2g2 publishing a how to article on a defunct specification (which is what HTML is).

Note to moderator: Please do not edit the URL in this post as it is part of an example XML declaration which will not work if it is removed. Re: Standards Compliance Quoth the poster: As long as they get something up without any major errors in the major browsers, they can worry about the finer details of compliance later. I have to object to this statement. Compliance really isn't a finer detail; These standards exist for a reason. Just because Microsoft chooses not to adhere to the standards doesn't make them any less important (Microsoft is the ONLY browser vendor left that isn't moving towards 100% standards compliance, by the way). Just because it displays right, doesn't mean it is right. If HTML is written to comply with the standards, it makes the web a better place for everyone. Something else that's important to keep in mind is that in some countries if your HTML is broken so that it can't be read by a screen reader, you can be sued for discrimination against the blind. Re: XHTML XHTML is HTML; XHTML is just XML compliant HTML. Put in a DOCTYPE as you've mentioned, explicitly close all your elements (e.g. instead of , close your paragraphs with

instead of leaving them hanging), quote your attributes (href="file.html" instead of href=file.html), add the proper namespace attribute and language definitions (), make sure you close the tags in the proper order (

this is a test

), and you have XHTML. The idea of XHTML is to gradually move from HTML to XML and beyond. If you update the Uni Project to XHTML now, it will save having to do it later. I don't mean to be pushing your buttons but you really should address XHTML because it's trivial to write XML compliant HTML. Is it really too much effort to put in a few trailing slashes? Re: HTML is(n't) a programming language HTML isn't a programming language by the technical definition of a programming language because it doesn't have conditionals (ifs) or loops. HTML is a markup language.

Re: closing tags
br, hr, img, etc are like guideML





and XHTML MUST be in lowercase.

From the www-validator mailing list at w3.org:

Le ven 13/09/2002 à 22:19, James Ralston a écrit :
> I'm trying to make a justification to management why our organization
> should care about producing valid [X]HTML.
>
> The current attitude is:
>
> 1. We design our documents for a consistent "look and feel"
> (using mostly WYSIWYG HTML editors).
>
> 2. Our documents render "properly" in Netscape/Mozilla/IE.
>
> 3. Why bother to take the extra time to produce valid HTML when
> the "invalid" HTML works just fine?
>
> I'm sure people have written documents to refute these types of
> attitudes. Unfortunately, I'm having very little luck in performing
> web searches for such documents, because the phrase "valid HTML"
> appears on about a billion web pages.

You can have a look at the following articles:
- "My site is standard! And yours?" http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/Web-Quality.html
- "Buy standard compliant Web sites" http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/07/WebAgency-Requirements
- "Liberty! Equality! Validity!" http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2001/validate/
- "HTML Standard compliance- Why bother?" http://wdvl.com/Authoring/HTML/Standards/

There are many many more resources on the topic. You'll probably get the best answers by searching in the archives of the public mailing list [email protected] at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-evangelist/ or by asking your question on this mailing list.

Regards,

Dom
--
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/ W3C/INRIA mailto:[email protected]

F83965?thread=207080 related thread

'Fraid I had to give up on the Uni Project. It would have needed a major overhaul. I've just started grad school and don't have the time to do it then deal with another round of revisions.

Since I didn't have an official sub-editor yet, who else should I notify about this so the topic can be up for grabs?

Isn't there some sort of adoption center for ownerless guide entries now? You could give it up to new parents.

BTW, I tried to post earlier that I really do like your entry, but for some reason h2g2 does not like when I try to post to this thread. It timed out and told me "illegal headers" several times. But I do like it.

It is a shame because it was a good article that just needed minor work

Nireena, if you change your mind you can find a back up copy of most of the GuideML at <./>test830008</.>

If anybody else wants to polish of Nireena's work and can obtain her consent you can also find most of the GuideML at the above link.

Thanks for digging up the link, HappyDude.

I have no problems if someone wants to use the draft I wrote as a starting point. Like I said, it needs a lot of work to bring it up to date. It's a good concept for a Uni Project that's been kicking around for a while now- I actually took it over from someone else several months ago. I hope somebody picks it up who can give it the attention it deserves.

In that case
<./>test830008</.> GuideML
A830008 Page

Please Start a thread on the page & post New GuideML code to the thread, indicating where in the page it should go.


AND...

are there any volunteers to write brief introductory sections on Web Standards/Accessibility & Both Client & Server Side Scripting?

I don't mind doing the first one.

Frankie you might find the following helpful
http://webstandards.org/
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Anyone got a non geek way of describing what a "character set" is

Myself I would just say that the universal (Unicode) character set contains every character for every human written language you can use with a computer, e.g. Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Ukranean. A "character set" is just a definition of the section of the universal character set that a particular document uses. Then I would give some examples.

It's not an entirely accurate description but I think it would serve its purpose.

thats non geek

Heh... Was that a question or a statement?

erm... both