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Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards

Posted by michael on Sat Nov 22, 2003 12:02 AM
from the two-cents dept.
Joe Clark writes "Nearly a year after an interview with this correspondent highlighted a few problems with Slashdot's HTML, Daniel M. Frommelt and his posse have recoded a prototype of Slashdot that uses valid, semantic HTML and stylesheets. Frommelt projects four-figure bandwidth savings in the candidate redesign, were it adopted, not to mention better appearance in a wide range of browsers and improved accessibility. Next he needs volunteers to retool the Slashdot engine. And yes, he did it all with CmdrTaco's blessing." Slashdot has kept its HTML 3.2 design for a long time ("because it works"), but perhaps this effort will be a catalyst for change...
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  • CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

    I'm all for it. If it makes /. load faster when I hit CTRL-R 10 times per half hour then I'd be very happy!

    On second thought, that could mean more time working. Scratch the idea.
    • Re:CTRL-R by dei3oe (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:13AM
      • Re:CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

        by krisp (59093) * on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:20AM (#7534742)
        (http://www.krisp.com/)
        though, if you read the article, you'd know that the design is exactly the same, except the old HTML 3.2 was replaced with standards-compliant CSS.

        Then again, this is slashdot, and we don't read articles.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:CTRL-R (Score:4, Funny)

          by the_other_one (178565) * on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:25AM (#7534767)
          (http://slashdot.org/)
          What's an article?
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:CTRL-R by ergo98 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:37AM
            • Re:CTRL-R by Mr Guy (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:08PM
          • Article (Score:5, Funny)

            by yerricde (125198) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:41AM (#7534860)
            (http://www.anotherbear.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 25 2003, @03:29PM)

            Many languages have two articles, which correspond to English "an" and "the". Many of those languages have multiple forms, called "allomorphs," for each article, determined by context; in English, "an" becomes "a" before a consonant and "some" before a mass or plural noun. Russian has no articles, their function having been replaced by sticking nouns before the verb (to imply "the"-itude) or after the verb (to imply "a"-ness).

            Another meaning of "article" is any of the interesting pages linked to in the story at the top of a Slashdot article.pl page. In this case, Slashdot users would call this page [alistapart.com] "the article".

            [ Parent ]
        • RTFB by useosx (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:01AM
          • Re:RTFB by Slack3r78 (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:03AM
            • Re:RTFB by sydb (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @05:27AM
            • Re:RTFB by Eight 01 (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @06:05AM
              • Re:RTFB by Darren Winsper (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @06:46AM
            • Re:RTFB by fader (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @10:10AM
              • Re:RTFB by bhtooefr (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @10:32AM
              • Re:RTFB by IthnkImParanoid (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:27PM
              • Re:RTFB by bhtooefr (Score:2) Sunday November 23 2003, @08:59AM
            • Re:RTFB by AyeRoxor! (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:12AM
              • Re:RTFB by Slack3r78 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:26AM
              • Re:RTFB by AyeRoxor! (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:57AM
              • Re:RTFB by AyeRoxor! (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @09:02PM
              • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
            • Re:RTFB by Mortanius (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:21PM
            • Portrait mode by Chris Pimlott (Score:2) Wednesday November 26 2003, @02:50AM
          • Re:RTFB by W32.Klez.A (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:53AM
          • Re:RTFB by CaptnMArk (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @06:27AM
          • Re:RTFB by skahshah (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @07:13AM
          • Re:RTFB by Cygnus78 (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @07:58AM
            • Re:RTFB by ConceptJunkie (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:18PM
          • Re:RTFB by Ctrl-Z (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @10:45AM
            • Re:RTFB by FuzzyBad-Mofo (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:56PM
          • Re:RTFB by generic-man (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @10:55AM
          • Re:RTFB by lisany (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:40PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:CTRL-R by JebuZ (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:13AM
          • Re:CTRL-R by sketerpot (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:27PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:CTRL-R by henc (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @07:52AM
        • Re:CTRL-R by ericdano (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:41AM
          • Re:CTRL-R by JWSmythe (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:59PM
            • Re:CTRL-R by ericdano (Score:2) Sunday November 23 2003, @12:11AM
              • Re:CTRL-R by JWSmythe (Score:2) Sunday November 23 2003, @08:49PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:CTRL-R by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:22AM
        • Re:CTRL-R by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:55AM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • F5 by ergo98 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:16AM
      • Re:F5 by y0bhgu0d (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:24AM
        • Re:F5 (Score:5, Insightful)

          This is the classic response to that comment (about wasteful whitespace), yet I don't buy it.

          a) Totally guessing, but about 99.9999% of the pages served up are interpreted by "no one" other than the browser. It's more "readable" by the browser minus the whitespace.

          b) Most pages, like this, is "mechanically generated" - What you see in the final results was rendered: It isn't the "source-code". As such there is absolutely no code maintenance issues.

          What you're left with is the prospect that maybe one out of every million page hits is going to a Slashdot developer who's debugging that the rendered properly, though if it's XHTML transitional then a XML editor would be a great choice and would again make it irrelevant if it's clogged full of waste whitespace.
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:F5 by pixel.jonah (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:34AM
            • Re:F5 by ericdano (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:43AM
              • Re:F5 by typhoonius (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:27AM
              • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:F5 by Slime-dogg (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:41AM
            • Re:F5 by NeXTer (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @07:01AM
              • Re:F5 by altmel (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @09:35AM
              • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
            • Re:F5 by Cameroon (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @07:53AM
            • Re:F5 by john82 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @09:28AM
            • Re:F5 by larry bagina (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:12AM
            • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:F5 by Doomdark (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @06:27PM
          • Re:F5 by sketerpot (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:34PM
          • Re:F5 by ergo98 (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @03:54PM
          • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
      • by yerricde (125198) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:46AM (#7534883)
        (http://www.anotherbear.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 25 2003, @03:29PM)

        how about eliminating all of the completely wasteful, bandwidth and processor consuming, whitespace?

        As you point out, XML, CSS, and ECMAScript, unlike Python, are not very sensitive to whitespace. Slashdot can mitigate whitespace's contribution to bandwidth in two ways: 1. mod_gzip (which Slashdot already uses), and 2. caching proxies that strip excess whitespace. But this article itself is intended to be read by developers, and clarity counts.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:F5 by dvdeug (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @03:20AM
        • Re:F5 by ergo98 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:26AM
          • Re:F5 by Mr. Slippery (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:39AM
            • Re:F5 by netsharc (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @09:58AM
              • PHP and Smarty by justMichael (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @10:56AM
      • Re:F5 by Webmonger (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:02PM
        • Re:F5 by ergo98 (Score:1) Sunday November 23 2003, @09:18AM
          • Re:F5 by Webmonger (Score:2) Sunday November 23 2003, @12:04PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • forwardslashdot by essreenim (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:26PM
    • Re:CTRL-R by black mariah (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:07AM
    • Re:Confarnit! by Morosoph (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:16AM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • I'm worried... by SushiFugu (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:07AM
  • *looks down* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xerithane (13482) <xerithane.nerdfarm@org> on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:07AM (#7534664)
    (http://www.dacels.info/ | Last Journal: Monday January 05 2004, @10:45AM)
    Hell just froze over.

    Brr.
    • Re:*looks down* by gad_zuki! (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:10AM
      • Re:*looks down* by colinleroy (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @05:05AM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:*looks down* by Nodatadj (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @06:05AM
    • Re:*looks down* by Jugalator (Score:3) Saturday November 22 2003, @06:19AM
      • Re:*looks down* by gmhowell (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:40PM
      • Re:*looks down* by Xerithane (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:25PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • by CSharpMinor (610476) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:08AM (#7534665)
    They're actually proud of this? That they went so many years without complying to HTML standards? It is obvious that Slashdot was just planning to break the HTML standard to force everyone to use Slashdot's "integrated" browser, Mozilla.

    This isn't the first time this has happened. Remember when BBS's became popular, and Slashdot "integrated" one into their site to kill any competition? Or all the times that Slashdot has brought down "competing" sites by linking to them, thereby safeguarding their website monopoly?

    It's a shame that the DoJ let them off for this....
  • While you're at it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GoldMace (315606) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:08AM (#7534668)
    Could you please make page 2 of comments actually be page 2 of the comments. I might be incredibly naive, but it seems something more like page 1.5. I don't know about the rest of you, but I always just read the odd numbered pages of comments, because like way too much stuff if repeated from the previous page on the even numbered ones.
  • Sounds good by kevin_conaway (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:08AM
    • Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Informative)

      by LFS.Morpheus (596173) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:39AM (#7534853)
      (http://www.wuputah.com/)
      Slashdot doesn't use "Times New Roman." It uses absolutely no font at all. This means that your browser renders it using its default proportional font. Proportional usually maps to one of "sans-serif" or "serif," and then you can change your default sans-serif or serif font.

      I'm not sure if this is settable in IE, but Mozilla, Safari, etc etc have these settings.

      Personally, I use serif, and then my serif font is Georgia. It looks great to me. But feel free to use sans-serif and Comic Sans if it suits you.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Sounds good by boatboy (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @09:50AM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Sounds good by OldeClegg (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:20AM
      • Re:Sounds good by Maserati (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:31AM
  • well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by revmoo (652952) <slashdot@meep . w s> on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:09AM (#7534674)
    (http://www.moolicious.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 26 2003, @01:51PM)
    but perhaps this effort will be a catalyst for change...

    How about a new look altogether?

    I had a look at the new site, and while it does fix many problems and should certainly be used to replace the existing setup, why not go a little farther and retool the look of the site as well?

    The look of slashdot has barely changed since the late 90's, and while the look certainly brings part of it's character, it's beginning to look dated. Perhaps it can be redesigned with a more effecient and cohesive interface while still retaining some of it's previous character?

    Or is it just a pipe-dream...
    • Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xerithane (13482) <xerithane.nerdfarm@org> on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:16AM (#7534715)
      (http://www.dacels.info/ | Last Journal: Monday January 05 2004, @10:45AM)
      The beauty of CSS is that it can look different just by linking to a different stylesheet. If you read the full article, you would note he did make an alternate layout. It was sort of a mix between games and the traditional green, and wasn't exactly pretty. I don't think the idea was for it to be pretty, just to be "different."

      [ Parent ]
      • Re:well by eyeye (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:48AM
      • Re:well by Cthefuture (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:22AM
      • Re:well by RickHunter (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @09:53AM
      • Livejournal.com by cyranoVR (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:21PM
      • Re:well (Score:5, Informative)

        by trenton (53581) <trentonl@@@gmail...com> on Saturday November 22 2003, @04:19PM (#7538052)
        (http://slashdot.org/)
        For an excellent example of this, check out css Zen Garden [csszengarden.com]. I was astonished by the different renderings of the same content with stylesheets changes only. I never fully understood the hoopla about CSS until playing around with this site.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:well by Anonymous Brave Guy (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:31PM
        • Re:well by Reziac (Score:2) Sunday November 23 2003, @03:56AM
    • Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shaitand (626655) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:20AM (#7534740)
      (http://www.ganjablogger.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 05 2006, @05:36PM)
      Not by this guy, he did a great job recreating the existing site, but did you look at his alternative skin? Dear god no...
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:well by prichardson (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:26AM
    • Re:well by G-funk (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:23AM
      • Re:well by great throwdini (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:26AM
        • Re:well by Jeremi (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:37AM
          • Re:well by leviramsey (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:08AM
            • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:well by hankaholic (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @07:31AM
      • Re:well by bytesmythe (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:09PM
    • Re:well by follower-fillet (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:59AM
    • Re:well by JoeBuck (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:07AM
    • Re:well by DerekLyons (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:48AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:well by viware (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:06PM
    • Re:well by ericdano (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:48AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Compact fluorescent bulbs by yerricde (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:53AM
    • 5 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • universal access (Score:5, Funny)

    by kurosawdust (654754) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:10AM (#7534676)
    will this work for browsers for those with disabilities? I think its only fair, considering I clicked on slashdot Games article and am now freakin' blind.
  • Volunteers? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:10AM
  • safari compliant by ack154 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:10AM
  • by Amiga Lover (708890) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:10AM (#7534685)
    The prototype is slowing already. You bastards! you slashdotted slashdot!
  • Finally! by cgranade (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:12AM
    • Re:Finally! by jesser (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:48AM
  • Explains some stuff by Stonent1 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:12AM
    • Re:Explains some stuff by momerath2003 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:32AM
    • Re:Explains some stuff (Score:5, Informative)

      by BJH (11355) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:35AM (#7534821)
      IE's character code handling is heuristic if no character code is specified in the HTTP header or the HTML head block.
      It scans through the page and tries to match the character frequency against average character frequencies for various languages. If you're seeing Slashdot as Big5, then that means IE thought that the character frequency matched Big5 most closely.
      [ Parent ]
  • "because it works" by TheRedHorse (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:12AM
  • Hallelujah! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EchoMirage (29419) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:12AM (#7534695)
    This is long long long long long overdue. Just because HTML 3.2 "worked" didn't make it good, or right. A proper application of [X]HTML and CSS can be a huge bandwidth saver. It looks like Google [google.com] also updated their design yesterday or today - no doubt to subtly cut down on the huge amounts of bandwidth they serve out. More importantly for Slashdot, however, is that writing their code in an open and updated fashion really opens up the market for the kinds of people that can access the site, and that's never a bad thing. So congratulations on starting this project, and I hope it gets underway soon!

    Now maybe I'll finally be able to change my .sig!
    • Re:Hallelujah! by great throwdini (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:35AM
    • Re:Hallelujah! by IntlHarvester (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:06AM
      • Re:Hallelujah! by CAIMLAS (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @05:00AM
        • Re:Hallelujah! by IntlHarvester (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @05:49AM
          • Re:Hallelujah! by EchoMirage (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:56AM
            • Re:Hallelujah! by bcs_metacon.ca (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @07:33PM
      • Re:Hallelujah! by nathanm (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @04:17PM
    • Re:Hallelujah! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zoop (59907) on Saturday November 22 2003, @01:18AM (#7535025)
      I like bandwidth savings but I am really curious: are any blind people (let's face it; we're not talking about "accessible" for paraplegics or the deaf) read Slashdot?

      And do you do it with a reader that doesn't interface directly with IE's rendering engine rather than reading the HTML directly?

      Despite running some very information-centric sites, I have yet to see a confirmed assistive technology surfing my site in the logs--yes, I know all about spoofing, which is why I ask...you'd think that some of them, given the Biblical proclamations about standards liberating the handicapped that come from ALA, would just be a HTML-slurpers that give a unique identifier to logs and simply break on IE-only sites.

      So, any of you out there? Is the site unusable on JAWS or some such? I want real blind people who use it every day rather than somebody who once listened to JAWS read it in a lab or academic setting.
      [ Parent ]
      • Humanconf by yerricde (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @09:20AM
      • Re:Hallelujah! by Aquitaine (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:00AM
      • Do blind people read [x]? by oneiros27 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @11:08AM
      • Re:Hallelujah! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2003, @11:09AM (#7536357)
        I'm a blind /. user and I use either JAWS interfacing with IE (yes, I know, windows sucks but Gnopernicus is not there yet) or command-line browsers such as lynx and links. For the most slashdot works alright, and I'd say CSS and XHTML only affect people using more semantic tools, like those who use Emacs to browse.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Hallelujah! by gmhowell (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @12:47PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Hallelujah! by jcoy42 (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @01:39AM
    • Re:Hallelujah! by An Anonymous Hero (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @04:38AM
      • Re:Hallelujah! by hkmwbz (Score:2) Saturday November 22 2003, @08:29AM
    • Tidying posts (Score:5, Insightful)

      Amen!

      I hope they implement ASAP.

      But there is another challenge, and that's the posts people write. Anybody care about their code? For example, quoting, to do it properly, one should write: <blockquote><p>blah, blah</p></blockquote>. That's an awful lot of typing.

      A page is not going to validate unless the posts are correct.

      The way I have planned to do this on one of my sites, is to make sure that every time somebody clicks "Preview" or "Submit", the post is handled to Tidy [sourceforge.net] for sanity checks and conversion. By using preview, you can correct you're code, but you can never submit something that isn't well-formed.

      I'm using Perl too, not Slashcode, but AxKit [axkit.org]. Nevertheless, a good Perl implementation of Tidy is still lacking. There is a HTML::Tidy [sourceforge.net] project page on Sourceforge, but it hasn't really gotten off the ground.

      Does anybody else want to work on this, or do you have other ideas for cleaning up posts?

      [ Parent ]
    • google by koekepeer (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @05:41AM
    • (OT Sig Troll) by cookd (Score:1) Saturday November 22 2003, @02:58AM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Agent sensing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Trillan (597339) on Saturday November 22 2003, @12:13AM (#7534698)
    (http://pyile.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 19 2006, @01:33PM)

    When the time comes, please add some code to switch to a light design when browsing with a PDA. I know right now you can select light mode, but it affects all browsers used from an account which isn't at all what I want...