Standardistas? Are you serious?
3 August 2008 | Posted by Jeffrey Barke | 2 comments
I probably shouldn't be so critical, but it's Saturday night and I'm at home working. During a brief Wikipedia break (computer jargon), I decided to read the standardista entry and followed an external link to webstandardistas.com.
I'm not sure what I expected to find, but I guess it wasn't a placeholder for a forthcoming Friends of Ed book. Regardless, it was disappointing to see that while these standardistas did have a valid DOCTYPE, it was neither HTML 4.01 Strict nor XHTML 1.0 Strict, but XHTML 1.0 Transitional. It was also disappointing to see inline JavaScript and CSS in the head instead of an external stylesheet.
And, while it was only a single error, it was the use of an incorrect inline JavaScript onsubmit (they have it incorrectly specified as onSubmit) handler that causes the page to not validate!
I'm also not sure how I feel about the use of h3 and p tags within unordered lists. Is this really necessary? Why not just have multiple uls below the headings? Or instead of the li with child p construct, use definition lists?
Finally, there's no server side validation on the "Keep me posted form"!
Jeffrey Barke is a front-end developer at The Knot
August 5th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
As we say over on this side of the pond, “It’s a fair cop, guv!” In our defence I’d suggest that anyone who has ever written a book will know what a night and day rollercoaster it is. The schedule is relentless. Some of the points you make are fair ones and, were on our very long list of ‘things to address’, but writing the book itself has taken over every waking minute as I’m sure you can understand.
Your point about using definition lists is an interesting one and something we might consider, however, as with anything in the minefield of standards based design is a matter of opinion.
Still, we hold up our hands. We’re only human after all!
Ask yourself though, shouldn’t you be getting out on a Saturday night instead of reading Wikipedia?
August 7th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
My apologies, Christopher. We are all only human and there was no reason for me to be so critical!
Also, you're totally correct, I probably should be getting out on Saturday night instead of reading Wikipedia!