forums and the W3C

Moonglobe

just noticing when i look at the phpbuilder source taht it's entirely broken and has probably uploaded in binary (lots of extra \n's--i've header that can be a symptom of binary?). AND, after checking with the W3C, doesnt even conform to HTML 4.01 Transitional! now i know that this is a vBulletin problem (and many other forums-- i believe phpBB does this too), but still for people advocating the use of our favourite language (PHP), we could at least advocate the proper use of the technologies (if you wanna call them that) taht go along side it (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc...) to be used in the way they were designed for.

its not even that hard. sure tables are quite portable, but not entirely. now CSS isnt very portable at all (and wont be untill M$ comes out with a compliant browser--and since IE7(if thats the new #) is tied to the next windows, and thats years off, it wont for a while). but still, it affords so much more control AND it complys to generally accepted web standards. soooooo........ who wants to help me make an XHTML 1.1 compliant forum script (probably canablizing other OS scripts such as phpB😎?

if nobody helps me ill make it myself, but it'd be nice to have someone with not-too-much experience but enough for the job (don't wanna tie up you 'professional's' time 😉).....

newbs welcome!
moon

Merve

I want to help, but I know absolutely nothing about databases...

Trying to create a forum without a database is weird (and exceptionally easy to hack)...

goldbug

You know... this is something I might take you up on, seeing as how I'm a big standards-compliance nazi and all.

Tho.... I'd rather just mod the phpBB code or whatever to make it compliant, rather than try to build somehting new.

Also, if you're going to go in and change the output to match XHTML1.1/CSS2.1, it can't hurt to make another copy that spits out XHTML2/CSS3, and just keep it on the side until those standards are "usable"

Moonglobe

good idea goldbug, and thx for reminding me i still have to read those TRs...

as for modding phpBB ya i guess so.... i guess i kinda just wanna have my own personal thing.... or me and some other peoples personal thing... to give out as a free, compliant script...... o well guess im just being a little unrealistic as to the difficulty of this.

Merve, so you don't know SQL? i'd teach you if you want.... none of my friends are interested 🙁

moon

goldbug

Originally posted by Moonglobe
good idea goldbug, and thx for reminding me i still have to read those TRs...

If you read the specs for CSS3, let me know if you (honestly) get pumped about HSL+A color support. I want to know if i'm (crazy/dorky/lame) the only one who audibly said "YES!" 🙂

jebster

Originally posted by Moonglobe
who wants to help me make an XHTML 1.1 compliant forum script (probably canablizing other OS scripts such as phpB😎?

if nobody helps me ill make it myself, but it'd be nice to have someone with not-too-much experience but enough for the job (don't wanna tie up you 'professional's' time 😉).....

newbs welcome!
moon

Question: Why would you go threw the trouble of making a new forum just cause the current ones are not XHTML 1.1 compliant when you could simply make a template for existing ones that is?

And I'd help but my coding skills are far inferior to other people heres! 🙁

Merve

I guess it doesn't matter; I can learn a trick or two here and there; I can program the simple stuff...I'm not really working on any projects at the moment except for my exceptionally crappy website (I'm completely redoing the stylesheets once I finish the calculator).

Besides, my website is filled with lame jokes and is about something I used to find funny; I think it scares people away when they see "Welcome to the Freak Society website!" at the top of the homepage.

Anyway, getting back to this, it seems interesting; I'm learning user authentification right now; and SQL ties in with that (I think) so I guess I could pick some stuff up from php.net; thanks for the offer Moonglobe; I'd really appreciate it!

Now, Moonglobe, I'm really not a great programmer, I know just a little bit of PHP, which I learnt for the sole purpose of making a guestbook for my website, but now I absolutely love and despise JavaScript, but that's besides the point. I'm not an HTML master, but I'm good at it and will be able to help with anything HTML (because it doesn't confuse me). I'm really not that great at CSS and I have to keep referring to online resources to remember what different parameters mean, but I know the syntax, and I know how it works, so I'll be able to help there too. JavaScript is not my forte and I absolutely despise it (but that's besides the point) but I'll be able to do some minimal stuff.

My education of programming languages has been very haphazard. I first learned HTML at a computer camp a very long time ago. That's also where I learnt some CSS and some JavaScript. I also learnt a bit of Visual Basic (and QBasic but we don't need that) but I forgot all of the Visual Basic I learnt and remember only one thing: End sub. I improved my HTML, CSS and JavaScript with online tutorials and by squinting through other's source code. I learnt PHP entirely from online tutorials without any help, except for once when I posted a question about trignometric functions on this site.

So, in the end, I won't be much of a help, but I'll help as much as I can. Please don't be frustrated if I screw something up, because I might. I'm learning all I can...and I can really help you with all sorts of math stuff for PHP because I learnt all that stuff trying to make a calculator. Anyway, I'd really be glad to help in any way, and a big thanks if you got to the end of this message!

Merve

I was just looking through the source code and I was having trouble making heads or tails out of it. It makes almost no sense to me! (Well it does make sense or I'd be really dumb not to understand that)

Anyway, you're right Moonglobe, the coding is really sloppy; I don't think they even closed the <body> and <html> tags! Even if it sometimes works without closing them, it's sloppy; a camp counsellor told me these words a few years ago, in reference to HTML: "Close what you open, even it works without closing it." Although I admit I don't always follow these directions, the code is sloppy in other ways, the stylesheet at the top of the page makes absolutely no sense; it's completely disorganized.

Moonglobe

Merve dont worry, i screw up too often enough 😃 admittedly though this will be rather hard to achieve via CSS and XHTML, especially for screens such as new post, but it can be done.....

the hardest bart will be making it cross-browser. IE6 doesnt really like advanced CSS, and seeing as most of the USER base will running it (although hopefully any good developer wont be), we have to compensate for that.

Merve

You're right Moonglobe, IE 6 doesn't even understand 'blink' in CSS. I'm going to read some XHTML tutorials (webmonkey) and then I still won't understand a thing...oh well.

Will there be any use of ASP? I hate ASP! I tried to learn it and gave up because it was so I[/I] stupid. Go PHP!

Anyway, I'm happy to help, and more than happy to learn. There's a pretty decent XHTML tutorial at Webmonkey, anywhere else where I can learn?

Moonglobe

no, Merve, no asp. i have almost no experience with the language and besides we wqant this to be entirely PHP&MySQL(or SQLite? i mean it will be installed by default in php5...).

stolzyboy

Originally posted by Merve
You're right Moonglobe, IE 6 doesn't even understand 'blink' in CSS.

That's cuz it was only supported in Netscape! Never in IE, and thank god, the blink tag was possibly the most annoying tag ever!

Moonglobe

ya, i think text-decoration: blink is nestcape proprietory...but i wouldnt know for sure. guess ill just have to believe stolzy 🙂

moon

goldbug

Sadly, blink IS in the CSS2 spec.

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/text.html#lining-striking-props

but note:

blink
Text blinks (alternates between visible and invisible). Conforming user agents are not required to support this value.

So yeah, you can say that it's valid based on the W3C spec, but I'd agree with others that it is/was one of the most annoying web "features" ever. (Followed very closely by the horrible ability to embed a MIDI track or other audio bg music)

EDIT:
Almost forgot to mention... for those who don't know, blinking text is a big NO-NO as far as accessibility goes.
See:
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/text.html#lining-striking-props
and more importantly:
http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG/guidelines.html#tech-on-off-blinking-text

And for those still with me (and give a crap), the CSS3 info on blinking:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-css3-text-20030514/#text-blink

Moonglobe

so Merve, goldbug you guys in? i dont really know how to organize this but i need to know if im alone first....

Merve

I won't be able to actually create any databases; I tried downloading a phpdev bundle and it didn't work; now I can't delete some of the files, and I can't even change the directory of another...it was then that I realised that Rogers Internet Service doesn't support servers run from your own home...(me so dumb sometimes)...

Anyway, enough about my problems, can you download MySql without any sort of PHP Bundle...I mean...I still want to be able to work on this with MySql.

I can help with HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, minimal XHTML, extremely minimal XML, nothing else...I won't be an extremely valuable asset; I'll just speed up the process with some stuff that's really easy...

Thanks for the this opportunity; I love volunteering to do something fun, strange, weird, useful/useless, etc.

P.S. I think 'blink' sucks too, but couldn't you achieve the same effect using loops and JavaScript? (Not that I'd want to)

goldbug

Originally posted by Merve

P.S. I think 'blink' sucks too, but couldn't you achieve the same effect using loops and JavaScript? (Not that I'd want to)

You could, but that still makes it a "bad" thing as far as accessibility goes. Last I checked, any form of blinking, animated, moving elements are not really encouraged by the different accessibility groups.

Just some reference:
WAI/WCAG:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-movement

Section 508:
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12#Web (letter "j")

And just an interesting stat, for those who care:
"Over 10% of the online population is disabled (750 million people worldwide, 55 million Americans)" (source: http://www.watchfire.com/solutions/accessibility.asp)

Now! to the task at hand!
Moonglobe: I'd love to help mod the forum markup if i've got any free time. Unfortunately (well, actually its a good thing), I've got a couple freelance gigs that take a good deal of my time (in addition to full-time employment).

It might be a good idea to set up a CVS repository for the project somewhere, and also maybe a bugzilla (or like) bug tracking system. Just an idea.
If you've got something relatively informal like CVS or the like, I can just download a page or two here and there and fix as I have time. Up to you.

Moonglobe

ok well hmmmmmm im not that well versed in the nuances of setting us a CVS.... is it hard?

/me goes and googles it....

Moonglobe

ok before i go ahead and do anything, any suggestions as to what to call it?