Re: BARUDA

[s_behrens@emulex.com (S�nke Behrens)]

smentzer@pacbell.net (Steve Mentzer) wrote:

>Gee nathan, you do have a point here. Stupid pictures and stuff need to be 
>eliminated. Lets not clog up the WWW here. In fact, why dont we all revert 
>back to VT52 terminals and 1200 baud modems. 

In fact, people learning about HTML design (see the "Web Pages That
Suck" page for a good course of what mistakes to avoid) and getting
smart about bandwidth (won't happen until we're billed for Internet
access by megabyte, hour and kilometre (mile for you Americans :))
would do the WWW a world of good. But that's neither here nor there.

The question one has to ask regarding a specific site is not "Does it
work with browser XYZ", but "Is this valid HTML?" and "Is this a good,
user-friendly design?".

Looking at the "valid HTML" bit, there _are_ a number of problems with
the site (all caused by using an automatic HTML creator instead of
hand-scripting ... WYSIWYG tools for the WWW all have one thing in
common, they still suck, alas).

1) The site uses extensions to HTML 2.0 (mainly FONT and SIZE
attributes), but doesn't declare that. In fact, there isn't even a
DOCTYPE entry at the start. That's easily remedied by putting in one
line at the very beginning of the document.
2) It looks like the site incorrectly nests <B> </B> tags. There are
some things you can't have inside that pair, and this document has
em'all :). The list is long, see a web validation service for details.
3) The use of '&' in links. This is the most serious one and is
probably what throws lynx off. '&' has special meaning in HTML, and
using it as a CGI separator shows that not enough thought went into
the CGI script. Fortunately, changing a script to another separator
('!', for example), is trivial to do. Whether the search engine used
will be thus changed I don't know. It'd make sense.

"But it works with ExploScape!!" I hear you wail. Well, it does. That
only means that these browsers are very lenient in the way they
interprete HTML, though; probably to make sure that even badly
scripted pages display. It doesn't mean that the HTML underneath is
sound.
Compare it to "But it compiles under foocc!". You probably all heard
_that_ one at one time or another ... but it almost always means the C
code in question is fouled up.

One last comment: Arguing about fine points of HTML design seems a
fool's delight to me in view of the actual _content_ of the page. This
page is actually a perfect example of the much-lamented "We have
powerful, almost instantaneous communication with anyone ... and
nothing to say" symptom. It's like all these home pages with bios and
pictures of the dog and family on them. The WWW might contain a good
deal of information, art, literature and culture, but it's hidden
between terabytes of trash.

Soenke
-- 
If you declare love, what identifier scope does it have?
    (Unknown C geek)