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

I've been analysing the HTML in all the frames (but particularly the Navigation frames), and noticed that it has a few problems which might be causing some speed and layout problems (i.e. button bar cut-off) in some browsers.

The main problems stem from the fact that there are a number of different HTML versions being employed at the same time here, some is 3.2, some is 4.0 Transitional, but there are a couple of things that are in the wrong place.

* Most notable is the nesting of the containing the BBC's drop-down list. This has been placed at the same level as a tag, and it should be inside a tag. The browser can work out what you mean, more or less, but it *might* be throwing out table cell placement. The same is true for the form containing the 'Search h2g2' button, a little further down.

* There are also a couple of places where has been used, which is bound to upset the browser. Percentages aren't allowed in cell widths in either 3.2 or 4.0.

* There's also an align="top" in a tag which already has a valign attribute assigned.

* There is a cell with nowrap="1" in it - it should just be , I think.

* Also, if you are steering towards HTML 4.0, the tag has been deprecated.

I'll have a look at the other two frames next.

Sorry - three other frames. Forgot about the little thin one up there. Here's what I've found:

Thin 'forum name' frame
-------------------------------

* No ... element.

* There's and tags in there, which must have slipped through from the XML or something.

Forum Conversation list frame
---------------------------------------

* Mainly bad nesting of tags (of which there are hundreds) with and blocks. I'm sure you're thinking about stylesheets already - that'll make the pages significantly smaller and remove the need for tags altogether. You can also reference a different stylesheet for different browsers that are detected.

* Sooooo many nested tables for quite a small amount of information - no wonder it takes so long to create, load and render... This page took 351, according to the source.

* <td width="xx%" found. in a number of places.

Forum threads frame
---------------------------

This is largely clean, but a couple of minor things:

* <td width="xx%" found.

* bgcolor="669999" and bgcolor="99CCCC" found - # left out.

Sorry - three other frames. Forgot about the little thin one up there. Here's what I've found:

Thin 'forum name' frame
-------------------------------

* No ... element.

* There's and tags in there, which must have slipped through from the XML or something.

Forum Conversation list frame
---------------------------------------

* Mainly bad nesting of tags (of which there are hundreds) with and blocks. I'm sure you're thinking about stylesheets already - that'll make the pages significantly smaller and remove the need for tags altogether. You can also reference a different stylesheet for different browsers that are detected.

* Sooooo many nested tables for quite a small amount of information - no wonder it takes so long to create, load and render... This page took 351, according to the source.

* <td width="xx%" found. in a number of places.

Forum threads frame
---------------------------

This is largely clean, but a couple of minor things:

* <td width="xx%" found.

* bgcolor="669999" and bgcolor="99CCCC" found - # left out.

"Most notable is the nesting of the containing the BBC's drop-down list. This has been placed at the same level as a tag, and it should be inside a tag"

Nice idea, but sadly if you put a form element inside a table cell, you get an unwanted line break. The only way to avoid it is to put the form outside the cell. The browser should be able to work out what's happening. I've never seen this cause a problem yet.

"There is a cell with nowrap="1" in it - it should just be , I think"

Not if you're using XML/XSL. The HTML will register the existence of the attribute and ignore the fact that it has a value. XML requires that attributes have values. Another way of doing it is to say NOWRAP="NOWRAP" but I prefer using ="1" beause it's shorter.

But it's interesting about the percentages in TD elements. I'll have to see if they actually make any difference.

FYI, once we are up and running, we then have to concentrate on making h2g2 BBC compliant, which considers all sorts of browsers on all sorts of platforms, and ensures a consistency that currently we don't really have.

However the emphasis is on getting the site back up, so we'll address all these issues later.

Actually, forget what I said about the thing - it's fine. That'll teach me to buy a non O'Reilly HTML book!

I understand the form-in-cell thing. Didn't know that! Ta.

And I see about the nowrap thing - I'm aware of the XML requirements for attributes, and I see you're serving up XHTML, but the HTML validator at w3.org didn't like it, so I thought I'd point it out... I didn't realise that the browser picks out the existence of any mention of the word 'nowrap' - that's interesting.

So, Jim, you're right all round, as per usual!

Noted, Mark. I'll get back to the functionality bits, now that Demon's turned its routers back on...

BTW, Jim, seeing as you're already using tags, how about sticking one round the Main Sites list-box and Go button group so that the Go button doesn't wrap to the next line (because it's font is too big in Mac IE5). That'll at least stop the top button bars from being pushed out of the frame in Conversation forums.