ready for the brickbats

<http://charlottetoastmasters.info>

It's a simple site with few graphics but I think it conveys the
information it's intended to.

Fire away!

--
"Reason and Persuasion are hallmarks of the civil society; Faith
and Force are attributes of the primitive and political society"
Rick Pasotto rick (AT) niof (DOT) net http://www.niof.net

Rick Pasotto <rickpasotto (AT) chi (DOT) news.speakeasy.net> wrote:

http://charlottetoastmasters.info

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...tmasters.info%
2F

You waste people's time when you do not check your own work. Pressing the
W3C button ON YOUR OWN PAGE would have told you that your page has issues.

The Doormouse

--
The Doormouse cannot be reached by e-mail without her permission.

Neal <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

The validator buttons - does anyone really care??

I do. If you click on the left button, the W3C validator pops up and
barfs up a couple errors on the page immediately. That's a problem for
two reasons.

First, the original poster does not check his work.

Second, he is willing to lie about it.

Oh, and to be picky, it is a problem for a third reason: there is an
implicit assumption that WE will validate the errors for him. I am not a
dumb code-ape. I am a smart one. Wait, that sounded ... wrong.

The Doormouse

--
The Doormouse cannot be reached by e-mail without her permission.

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 04:43:15 GMT, The Doormouse <doormouse (AT) att (DOT) net> wrote:

Neal <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

The validator buttons - does anyone really care??

I do. If you click on the left button, the W3C validator pops up and
barfs up a couple errors on the page immediately. That's a problem for
two reasons.

First, the original poster does not check his work.

Second, he is willing to lie about it.

Oh, and to be picky, it is a problem for a third reason: there is an
implicit assumption that WE will validate the errors for him. I am not a
dumb code-ape. I am a smart one. Wait, that sounded ... wrong.

The Doormouse

Heh. Well, I agree, he's a dumbass for putting the buttons up when the
page doesn't validate. But then again, I think he's a dumbass for putting
them up altogether.

If I see those buttons, I assume the poster had enough brains to validate.
If the page does NOT validate, still, I assume it does anyway, and I
probably miss a bunch of stuff. Whose loss is that?

Hint: Not mine.

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 04:43:15 GMT in alt.html.critique, The Doormouse
wrote:

Neal <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

The validator buttons - does anyone really care??

I do. If you click on the left button, the W3C validator pops up and
barfs up a couple errors on the page immediately. That's a problem for
two reasons.

First, the original poster does not check his work.

You are very much wrong about that.

Second, he is willing to lie about it.

You are very much wrong about that.

Oh, and to be picky, it is a problem for a third reason: there is an
implicit assumption that WE will validate the errors for him. I am not
a dumb code-ape. I am a smart one. Wait, that sounded ... wrong.

You are very much wrong about that.

I had checked that code *many* *many* times. And it validated. That's
why I put the logos there. I had made a last minute change from an <h2>
element with a <ul> to a <dl> and failed to change the <li>'s to
<dd>'s.

That is corrected now.

Do *you* re-run the validator for *every* minute change you make to a page?

--
"We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise
with other men's wisdom." -- Michel Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
Rick Pasotto rick (AT) niof (DOT) net http://www.niof.net

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 06:08:14 -0400 in alt.html.critique, Rick Pasotto wrote:

I had checked that code *many* *many* times. And it validated. That's
why I put the logos there. I had made a last minute change from an <h2
element with a <ul> to a <dl> and failed to change the <li>'s to
dd>'s.

I've changed it back to a <ul>. I want the bullets.

--
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 B.C)
Rick Pasotto rick (AT) niof (DOT) net http://www.niof.net

In article <Xns9548DCFE083DCdoormouseattnet (AT) 68 (DOT) 12.19.6>, The Doormouse
<doormouse (AT) att (DOT) net> wrote:

Neal <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

The validator buttons - does anyone really care??

I do. If you click on the left button, the W3C validator pops up and
barfs up a couple errors on the page immediately. That's a problem for
two reasons.

First, the original poster does not check his work.

Second, he is willing to lie about it.

Oh, and to be picky, it is a problem for a third reason: there is an
implicit assumption that WE will validate the errors for him. I am not a
dumb code-ape. I am a smart one. Wait, that sounded ... wrong.

The Doormouse

Hmmm, when I click on the W3C icon I get a "valid" report.

--
Andy D.
http://members.westnet.com.au/andydolphin/
Fine art gallery - online, Western Australia
Landscapes, seascapes and still life paintings in oils.

andyd (AT) elsewhere (DOT) com (Andrew D) wrote:

Hmmm, when I click on the W3C icon I get a "valid" report.

Good for you. When I ran it, there were errors.
Maybe I should have taken a screen capture just for you.

He has since fixed the errors.

The Doormouse

--
The Doormouse cannot be reached by e-mail without her permission.

Rick Pasotto <rickpasotto (AT) chi (DOT) news.speakeasy.net> wrote:

First, the original poster does not check his work.

You are very much wrong about that.

The objective examination of your page was that there were glaring errors
which would have been caught by simply pressing one button.

Second, he is willing to lie about it.

You are very much wrong about that.

Objectively, the placement of a "valid XHTML" button on you page was a
lie because the page did not in fact validate.

Do *you* re-run the validator for *every* minute change you make to a
page?

It is all about your page, which did not validate.

Your page validates now. Good!

The Doormouse

--
The Doormouse cannot be reached by e-mail without her permission.

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:25:04 -0400, Rick Pasotto
<rickpasotto (AT) chi (DOT) news.speakeasy.net> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 09:05:46 -0400 in alt.html.critique, Neal wrote:
I'll note, however, that you don't serve the XHTML as
application/xml+xhtml. What advantage are you looking for in XHTML?

OK. I've deleted the line. Is that a problem? The server is supposed to
handle that anyway, right?

If it's set up properly it will. Right now I'm seeing it served as
iso-8859-1, you wanted iso-8859-15 in your original meta. Setting that on
an Apache server is trivial, add this line to .htaccess in the root
directory:

AddType 'text/html; charset=iso-8859-15' .html

Or put whatever you prefer for the encoding. If it's a different server
than Apache, I don't know how to set that.

I didn't say it is the organization. Look, if you're blind and I tell
you "this is the logo for Coca-Cola" does it likely matter that it's a
logo?

If you want to know what a sighted person would see, yes. Otherwise it's
just decoration and the alt should be null.

alt shouldn't tell the user what the image is, necessarily. That might end
up irrelevent to the other content if put in verbal form. alt="" is fine
if you really don't need to replace it. The alt value should simply be the
alternative content you offer in lieu of image usability.

So is a list a paragraph too? See, my problem is that if we use the
broadest available definition for a paragraph in HTML we end up making
damn near everything a paragraph. Whether or not it is, I'm not sure p
*should* be interpreted as any textblock which is not better described
as a heading, list item, form label, etc., which seems the natural
result of adopting that definition.

What something is depends in some cases on the author's intentions.

It's all well and good to say "separate content from presentation" but
everytime we use <br> we're putting presentation into the content.

Well, you've made a leap I wasn't going to. My rule is that presentation
should be in the HTML and not in the CSS only if the usability of the
unstyled page is comprimised otherwise. <br>, being empty, simply shows
where the line breaks. It's not semantic, certainly. But without it
mailing addresses and other like info cannot be usably presented (without
abusing some other markup).

Everytime we add a class= whose only purpose is to allow us to style the
item we're putting presentation into the content.

Again, this is a necessary step in CSS! Adding this attribute to otherwise
semantic markup does not change that markup to presentational markup. The
class is not presentation itself. At best, it's become
presentation-enabled semantic markup.

We are dealing with a
*markup* language, after all.

Here's a case for you. I initially had the header text as <h1> with
br>'s to force line breaks. It's now a list of four lines. With
appropriate styling, the result is the same and I think cleaner.
Could it be considered as a single item? Yes. Could it be considered as
four separate pieces of related information? Yes. Is one way right and
the other wrong? I don't know that there is a clear answer.

I think it's semantically the h1, and deserves that markup. I really am
not sure list markup's the best choice here. I'd likely use an <h1>
without line breaks but with margins which cause a line wrap if needed,
and a styled div for the extra tagline below.

Come on. This is perfect use of another element, though:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/...l#edef-ADDRESS .

Ah! So addresses are not really addresses but contact info for a form
or page? Are you saying that if I had a list of names and addresses I
should *not* use <address>? That seems a serious misuse of the
English language to me.

Sorry. Don't blame me, blame Berners-Lee and Connolly. That's the
definition. Evenn dates back to HTML2.
http://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/html/rfc1866.txt

I mean, I don't think the name makes too musch sense either, but this
element is nine years old, it's not going away. It still remains the
proper markup for author information.

OK, I've changed that to <address> which has the additional benefit of
allowing me to move a bit of styling out of the html and into the css.

Told ya.

You didn't address (cough) the other part of my comment. Do you consider
it wrong to use <address> in a list of names and addresses?

Just an omission, I missed that question. Sure, according to the specs it
is markup for author information. So, it wouldn't be semantically correct
for other uses.

We all know what address really means in English, but using address markup
for a general contact list is as incorrect as using table markup for a
description of a legged flat piece of furniture.