Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards 764

Posted by michael on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:02AM 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...

Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Search 764 Comments Log In/Create an Account

Comments Filter:

CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) * writes: <mrpuffypants@@@gmail...com> on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:06AM (#7534655)

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.

*looks down* (Score:5, Funny)

by Xerithane ( 13482 ) writes: <xerithane@nerLIS ... g minus language> on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:07AM (#7534664) Homepage Journal

Hell just froze over.

Brr.

Just another example of the Slashdot monopoly... (Score:5, Funny)

by CSharpMinor ( 610476 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:08AM (#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....

universal access (Score:5, Funny)

by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:10AM (#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.

The prototype is slowing already (Score:5, Funny)

by Amiga Lover ( 708890 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:10AM (#7534685)

The prototype is slowing already. You bastards! you slashdotted slashdot!

Wow, slashdot is ugly... (Score:5, Funny)

by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:15AM (#7534710) Journal

So I looked at final example [alistapart.com] and I was just about to complain about how messed up it was. The words in the boxes on the right were all scrunched against the left edge. There were these stupid little dots in front of the links. It was just plain ugly. Then I went to the real site and realized it had always been that way, I just haven't paid attention to it.

About the author... (Score:5, Funny)

by Lank ( 19922 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:16AM (#7534718)

Daniel M. Frommelt is the University World Wide Web Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville, an executive committee member of the Campus Web Council of Wisconsin, and a web standards advocate. Daniel spends his free time brewing beer.

I like the guy already.

Re:CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

by krisp ( 59093 ) * writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:20AM (#7534742) Homepage

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.

Re:CTRL-R (Score:4, Funny)

by the_other_one ( 178565 ) * writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:25AM (#7534767) Homepage

What's an article?

Re:CTRL-R (Score:2, Funny)

by ergo98 ( 9391 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:37AM (#7534838) Homepage Journal

And "an"?

Article (Score:5, Funny)

by yerricde ( 125198 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:41AM (#7534860) Homepage Journal

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".

haha (Score:2, Funny)

by VAXGeek ( 3443 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @01:44AM (#7534874) Homepage

i just went to the new slashdot code, and it looks horrible in konqueror.
the actual /. code renders fine though.

Sweet creepin' jesus! (Score:4, Funny)

by mikeswi ( 658619 ) * writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @02:00AM (#7534956) Homepage Journal

14 gigs PER DAY savings ????

I do ~90-100 gigs per MONTH and freak out at that.

I will never bitch about my bandwidth use again.
I will never bitch about my bandwidth use again.
I will never bitch about my bandwidth use again.
I will never bitch about my bandwidth use again.
I will never bitch about my bandwidth use again.
I will never bitch about my bandwidth use again.

Re:Hallelujah! (Score:2, Funny)

by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @02:06AM (#7534982) Journal

> Just because HTML 3.2 "worked" didn't make it good, or right

Tell that to all the Linux users who started browsing this site back in the 1990s with Nutscrape. Back then CSS meant "Optimized for Internet Explorer".

I can't believe the folks getting their undies in a wad because a webapp is a whole two years behind the brower state-of-the-art. Taco could spend his days adding new features to the moderation system ... or he could appease some HTML fetishists by performing an expensive rewrite that results in the same look and no new features.

Re:Not ANOTHER non-standard page... (Score:2, Funny)

by MuckSavage ( 658302 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @02:13AM (#7535014)

Are you serious? Cause if so, you should be modded up funny.

Re:The prototype is slowing already (Score:5, Funny)

by Maserati ( 8679 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @02:33AM (#7535068) Homepage Journal

It's worse than that, we've slashdotted future Slashdot. The implications for the time-space continuum are dire.

Re:*looks down* (Score:3, Funny)

by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @03:10AM (#7535159)

Slashdot on IIS. [alistapart.com]

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 07:09:02 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Last-Modified: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:38:43 GMT
ETag: "8036d049a6afc31:9a2"
Content-Length: 33923

Well, I never!

Re:CTRL-R (Score:2, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @03:55AM (#7535251)

I agree. Slashdot needs to promote more of its resources to helping the children of this community.

Re:Explains some stuff (Score:5, Funny)

by identity0 ( 77976 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:41AM (#7535334) Journal

If you're seeing Slashdot as Big5, then that means IE thought that the character frequency matched Big5 most closely.

A sad testament to how bad Slashdot grammar is... Next time someone asks you how bad the writing is on Slashdot, you can tell them "It's so bad my browser thinks it's Chinese!"

Re:RTFB (Score:3, Funny)

by sydb ( 176695 ) writes: <michael@nOSpam.wd21.co.uk> on Saturday November 22, 2003 @06:27AM (#7535496)

Try "I'm sure that looks very snazzy on the screen of the person who developed it, [...]"

Re:*looks down* (Score:3, Funny)

by Jugalator ( 259273 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @07:19AM (#7535570) Journal

*looks down*

Hell just froze over.

Brr.

Please, this isn't the proper thread to mention when you've got an erection. :-) But I'm glad it has finally happened for you too. I think the next step will be to go out to meet a girl. ;-)

Re:Not ANOTHER non-standard page... (Score:2, Funny)

by Magus424 ( 232405 ) writes: <magus@UMLAUTthe-magi.us minus punct> on Saturday November 22, 2003 @08:26AM (#7535683)

IE breaks the standards of the future.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Article (Score:3, Funny)

by mindriot ( 96208 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @08:41AM (#7535705)

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".

Hmmmm... well, normal people would call it "the article". Slashdot users would probably call it "a DoS target".

Re:Experiment (Score:1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @10:08AM (#7535918)

This is Slashdot. People sit there just reloading the front page.

Re:It's been done before (unofficially) (Score:2, Funny)

by salzbrot ( 314893 ) writes: on Saturday November 22, 2003 @11:10AM (#7536098)

<html> Nietzsche is dead </html>

There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.

Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards 764

Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards More Login

Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards

CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

looks down (Score:5, Funny)

Just another example of the Slashdot monopoly... (Score:5, Funny)

universal access (Score:5, Funny)

The prototype is slowing already (Score:5, Funny)

Wow, slashdot is ugly... (Score:5, Funny)

About the author... (Score:5, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:4, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:2, Funny)

Article (Score:5, Funny)

haha (Score:2, Funny)

Sweet creepin' jesus! (Score:4, Funny)

Re:Hallelujah! (Score:2, Funny)

Re:Not ANOTHER non-standard page... (Score:2, Funny)

Re:The prototype is slowing already (Score:5, Funny)

Re:looks down (Score:3, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:2, Funny)

Re:Explains some stuff (Score:5, Funny)

Re:RTFB (Score:3, Funny)

Re:looks down (Score:3, Funny)

Re:Not ANOTHER non-standard page... (Score:2, Funny)

Re:Article (Score:3, Funny)

Re:Experiment (Score:1, Funny)

Re:It's been done before (unofficially) (Score:2, Funny)

Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.

Slashdot Top Deals

Slashdot

CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

*looks down* (Score:5, Funny)

Just another example of the Slashdot monopoly... (Score:5, Funny)

universal access (Score:5, Funny)

The prototype is slowing already (Score:5, Funny)

Wow, slashdot is ugly... (Score:5, Funny)

About the author... (Score:5, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:5, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:4, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:2, Funny)

Article (Score:5, Funny)

haha (Score:2, Funny)

Sweet creepin' jesus! (Score:4, Funny)

Re:Hallelujah! (Score:2, Funny)

Re:Not ANOTHER non-standard page... (Score:2, Funny)

Re:The prototype is slowing already (Score:5, Funny)

Re:*looks down* (Score:3, Funny)

Re:CTRL-R (Score:2, Funny)

Re:Explains some stuff (Score:5, Funny)

Re:RTFB (Score:3, Funny)

Re:*looks down* (Score:3, Funny)

Re:Not ANOTHER non-standard page... (Score:2, Funny)

Re:Article (Score:3, Funny)

Re:Experiment (Score:1, Funny)

Re:It's been done before (unofficially) (Score:2, Funny)

Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.

Slashdot Top Deals

looks down (Score:5, Funny)

Re:looks down (Score:3, Funny)

Re:looks down (Score:3, Funny)