7 Replies Latest reply on Jul 7, 2004 9:26 PM by joehobson

    html standards compliance

      I've been out of the HTML loop for a while, but I'm getting up to speed again. Forgive me if this is silly or out-of-line.

      I've noticed that the HTML in Nukes is out of date compared to the latest W3C standards. Current trends seem to indicate that XHTML is the new standard for HTML and CSS 2.1 is the current standard for style. Most browsers are still getting up to speed on XHTML but will not blow up on the XHTML 1.0 Transitional DOCTYPE tag. It appears to be foolish to rely on CSS greater than 1.0 for good cross-browser compatibility, however. The problem I see is with tags like

      <center><strong><font class="something">
      There is obviously some CSS use here, but what I've been reading lately about XHTML and CSS has impressed upon me the value of keeping only content in the HTML code and relying on CSS for style and layout. Current CSS evangelists would frown on the use of "center", "strong", and "font" tags in HTML.

      I would like to see this type of detail delegated to themes. This would allow table-less CSS themes, old HTML 3.2 themes, WAP themes (perhaps), etc. Design control and browser interaction can be assigned to designers and be a bit more separated from J2EE developers.

      What's the process for getting Nukes more up to date? Should we submit patches to the forums?

        • 1. Re: html standards compliance

          first you submit patch then you have RW access to the CVS

          • 2. Re: html standards compliance

            I did an entire system redesign around XHTML, CSS, and W3C Accessibility about a year and a half ago, for a ColdFusion system i run for my dayjob. It has many benefits and very few drawbacks so i would definitely reccommend it. Knowing you want to do it is the easy part, actually getting the core system and individual modules to play well together may be another matter. For evidence of this, see the fix we did to the "forum text gets cut off at right" bug.

            I'm going to create a CSS/XHTML theme and we'll see how well that goes over with everyone when I'm done. Frankly i was surprised how little CSS is used within Nukes - my guess being because the PHPNuke code started before it was compatible with most browsers. In the ColdFusion system i run, we have a function similar to themes that is accomplished simply thru separate css files. If we could create a base set of classes (or update the set we currently have) it would give module developers more basic designs to work with, and less to recreate by themselves (fonts, headers, etc etc).

            I guess my only question then, is how much the Nukes dev community wants to committ to CSS and/or XHTML beyond just a theme? forums? news? admin modules? Of course many of these will change their view functions with 2.0 moving to portlets, but i could help with some CSS and/or XHTML if that's the way we want to go with it.

            ... .joe

            • 3. Re: html standards compliance

              Having a better CSS support is definitely a need. First let's have that in a theme, then we can work on modules.

              The forum module CSS should not be changed, it's ok as is but if there are bugs we can fix them.

              The CSS must be compatible with the most popular browsers : internet explorer, mozilla/firefox, safari (mine, if you want to see how it renders in safari you can use the site http://www.danvine.com/icapture).

              • 4. Re: html standards compliance

                 

                "cooper" wrote:
                Having a better CSS support is definitely a need. First let's have that in a theme, then we can work on modules.


                I created a theme using CSS that is a pretty good copy of the imagic theme, but using CSS rather than tables. I thought it was complete across popular browsers until i ran into the WinIE bug again - table width not cooperating with CSS margins. The difficulty in fixing that one is the positioning of the left & right columns, while maintaining proper width. Of course the theme looks fine if your modules don't have wide tables in them. I don't really have a Windows box to test on so i'm not sure i'll do much more with it right now. If anyone would like a copy to play with, let me know and i'll zip up what i have so far.

                "cooper" wrote:
                The forum module CSS should not be changed, it's ok as is but if there are bugs we can fix them.


                agreed, i think each module should be able to load their own stylesheet, if desired, to make design easier on module developers.

                "cooper" wrote:
                The CSS must be compatible with the most popular browsers : internet explorer, mozilla/firefox, safari (mine, if you want to see how it renders in safari...


                definitely. I use Firefox and Safari, and check on IE when necessary. And i stick to CSS1 as much as possible so that compatibility goes back a few years.

                ... .joe

                • 5. Re: html standards compliance
                  5holeem

                  i'd like to get a copy. tried to email you, but you don't have a valid address in your profile. how would you like to send or have me get the files?

                  • 6. Re: html standards compliance

                     

                    "5holeem" wrote:
                    i'd like to get a copy. tried to email you, but you don't have a valid address in your profile. how would you like to send or have me get the files?


                    sorry about not having the email, but ummm... you don't either? I've added a nospam email address and i've uploaded my imagic-css theme so you can take a look.

                    http://tinyurl.com/3apfa

                    Once again, i'm no CSS expert, but it looks great in modern browsers, except Windows IE. Will need to find a fix for that, but i don't really have the dev time right now. If you find a fix, please let us all know. Thanks... .joe



                    • 7. Re: html standards compliance

                      Sorry to disappoint, the URL listed in my previous post won't get you anything (Yahoo let me share a directory as Public but won't let anyone see files in it, wha?!?). This one should work, if you want the CSS theme.

                      http://tinyurl.com/ypdg8

                      ... .joe