Abyss Website Study

 
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Arctic
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Joined: 24 Sep 2004
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 11:54 pm    Post subject: Abyss Website Study Reply with quote

Seeing as Abyss is a web server, I thought it would be neat to take a look at how current standards are applied to the websites that are hosted on Abyss. My answer was kind of unexpected: badly. A far majority of the websites that are being hosted fail to validate, were never built with validation in mind, or outright omitted important aspects of their websites (DOCTYPES were frequently left lying).

Of those whom used XHTML as their DOCTYPE (Strict being a popular favor), most (if not all) were served as text/html. This means that most websites were not even fully taking advantage of XHTML, and parsers didn't go off and brake their websites with the usual XML "Oops your site just exploded" error, and often failed to validate through oversights (not including ALT tags, failing to properly enclose attribute values in quotation marks). Despite using XHTML, deprecated and/or bad practice were used in the creation of the websites (inline frames).

At least one website that was checked had caused the validator to cry in pain, and say "Sorry! This document could not be checked!" due to invalid characters being used for the character set.

Semantics were disregarded heavily, with data tables often being abused to create layouts. Font elements were regularly employed.

Some pages did not function correctly without Javascript, going so far as broken links.

The most popular language to use on websites was English.
One of the most noted elements was the deprecated <CENTER> element.

Just some notes of mine I got while strolling around. ;)
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AbyssUnderground
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Joined: 31 Dec 2004
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I come to the point I mentioned in a post a few weeks back...

If a site parses correctly in a number of browsers, who cares?! :-)

Not everyone has days or weeks to spend making their website 100% compliant to the full standards, you will also find that most people do not care as long as their site functions. Me being one of them.

Again this is my opinion but I can expect Ive spoken for a number of people.
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Tom Chapman
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Joined: 09 Jul 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AbyssUnderground wrote:
...you will also find that most people do not care as long as their site functions. Me being one of them...


My JS only ever works in IE.
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AbyssUnderground
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tom Chapman wrote:
AbyssUnderground wrote:
...you will also find that most people do not care as long as their site functions. Me being one of them...


My JS only ever works in IE.


Thats probably because you're not coding it properly. EG, using document.element instead of document.getElementById.
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Tom Chapman
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AbyssUnderground wrote:
Tom Chapman wrote:
AbyssUnderground wrote:
...you will also find that most people do not care as long as their site functions. Me being one of them...


My JS only ever works in IE.


Thats probably because you're not coding it properly. EG, using document.element instead of document.getElementById.


That's exactly what I'm doing. That's exactly what Mr Snell taught me to do.

Wednesday June 13th: Sir I have a bone to pick with you...
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AbyssUnderground
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 3:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There must be something else you're doing wrong then. I know FF uses different commands for some things.
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Tom Chapman
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AbyssUnderground wrote:
There must be something else you're doing wrong then. I know FF uses different commands for some things.


Misinterpretted? I meant he taught me to use "document.element" not "document.getElementById"
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AbyssUnderground
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 3:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I see, well you should use document.getElementById as document.element is an IE only function.
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Tom Chapman
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 3:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AbyssUnderground wrote:
I see, well you should use document.getElementById as document.element is an IE only function.


:cry:
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admin
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AbyssUnderground wrote:
Not everyone has days or weeks to spend making their website 100% compliant to the full standards, you will also find that most people do not care as long as their site functions.


When re-designing aprelium.com back in 2005 we had to explicitly force the site to not validate on some pages by using some bad HTML/CSS code to have it work with some browsers that are still used by our visitors.

We need at least 1 or another 2 years until we remove these old bits that are only for people using legacy technologies or browsers.
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rrinc
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My site is valid. :D
http://randomresources.org

Well, at least the first page is.
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jibbajabba
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 8:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i don't think any of my sites are vaildiated but aslong as they all work in internet explorer and firefox then i don't care :)
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Tom Chapman
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jibbajabba wrote:
i don't think any of my sites are vaildiated but aslong as they all work in internet explorer and firefox then i don't care :)


If the code is validated properly, the code should work in any standards browser.
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AbyssUnderground
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tom Chapman wrote:
jibbajabba wrote:
i don't think any of my sites are vaildiated but aslong as they all work in internet explorer and firefox then i don't care :)


If the code is validated properly, the code should work in any standards browser.


Try telling that to aprelium who had to force it not to validate to work in some browsers ;-)
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Tom Chapman
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AbyssUnderground wrote:
Tom Chapman wrote:
jibbajabba wrote:
i don't think any of my sites are vaildiated but aslong as they all work in internet explorer and firefox then i don't care :)


If the code is validated properly, the code should work in any standards browser.


Try telling that to aprelium who had to force it not to validate to work in some browsers ;-)


Theres several different ways of using code such as CSS, I guess they didn't use the code supported by the majority.
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AbyssUnderground
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I remember the first time I coded my site to validate. It worked in only one browser, that was IE. It didn't display in any other browser properly. It was then I decided, who cares if it validates or not, if it works it works and thats all that matters. I doubt anyone will care if some code is right or not so long as it works. Also I think you'll find most professional websites are validated properly either. Makes you think.
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Tom Chapman
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AbyssUnderground wrote:
I remember the first time I coded my site to validate. It worked in only one browser, that was IE. It didn't display in any other browser properly. It was then I decided, who cares if it validates or not, if it works it works and thats all that matters. I doubt anyone will care if some code is right or not so long as it works. Also I think you'll find most professional websites are validated properly either. Makes you think.


When you follow standards, you follow a set of guidelines. I've always had trouble explain why I and others do... Something to be proud of I spose...
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Arctic
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Websites that don't validate because of old, unused browsers make me cry. Internet Exploder 6 has the market share, but most of the problems with MSIE6's CSS rendering can be fixed using conditional comments to supply a second MSIE only stylesheet:

Code:
<!--[if lt ie 8]><link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="style.css"><![endif]-->


AbyssUnderground, one of the reasons for your site currently not validating is because you're using two of the four horsemen of non-validation: topmargin and leftmargin. You're setting the body's margin to "0" using this. This could be done in your inline style sheet (and it is). You're also omitting (apparently, too lazy to check using the DOM inspector or other means) your end tags for some elements (most commonly with your <center> element). Getting your website to display properly using the standards may seem irrelevant, but it is. Just getting the website to validate is half the battle, the other half is making your website's content make sense to something like a machine using semantic code (ul and ol elements for lists, for instance).

Usage of Cascading Style Sheets would make your website infinitely easy to edit if it should ever need to be in the future. Removing deprecated elements and replacing them with their newer relative is also pretty cool.

Most "professional" websites do validate. Most web "professionals" advertise the fact that they make XHTML/CSS/Section 508 valid websites. If you're going to make something on the Interweb, might as well make it properly. ;)

There are all sorts of reasons to follow the standards, but they, like most other things in life, are not immediately apparent. I use them because I know exactly what adhering to the standards means for the Internet and the future, but to someone who doesn't it's just some abstract concept that doesn't matter. That's probably how everyone felt about Cascading Style Sheets. The point is, there is value, it's just hidden.
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AbyssUnderground
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The point is, my website works in all common browsers today, so why spend days and hours trying to validate when the hard work of creating a site is already done?
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Arctic
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 7:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This was the article that originally got me off of tables (I stopped using tables for layout a while back, but I tied presentation to content still):

http://alistapart.com/articles/journey

For someone who doesn't care much for web design, though, the art of standards probably doesn't matter all too much if it works. :\
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