NYTimes.com Hand-Codes HTML & CSS

eldavojohn writes "The design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, recently answered readers' questions in the Times's occasional feature 'Ask the Times.' He was asked how the Web site looks so consistently nice and polished no matter which browser or resolution is used to access it. His answer begins: 'It's our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to "hand code" everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.'"

Re:Hand-coding?

[RuBLed (995686)]

Overhead at an outsourcing facility:

Hand-coding agent: I hate this guy, he's refreshing his browser every minute on the same news. I can't keep up.

Hand-coding supervisor: PrintScreen it!

Hand-conding agent: Brilliant!

Re:Hand-coding?

[nxtr (813179)]

Please refrain from alluding to such explicit language. For goodness sakes, Slashdot is not the Netherlands after 9 PM.

Re:Yes, and?

[Jellybob (597204)]

How I wish that was true.

It's the case for almost any *large* dynamic website, but having spent a couple of years doing web development in the design industry, I can tell you that at least in the UK, a large proportion of the small agencies are using Dreamweaver for most things.

Fuck knows why - I'd rather be handed an Illustrator file and turn it into HTML then have the crap that Dreamweaver spits out given to me, and have to try and turn it into something dynamic.

Great idea!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can use this idea to write programs, too.

Re:That's nothing.

[by Anonymous Coward]

That's not coding by hand, that's compiling by hand ;-p.

Another opportunity to post...

[bennomatic (691188)]

The badge [dimspace.com] I used to put on all my sites...

Re:Another opportunity to post...

[bennomatic (691188)]

Nice. I once thought about making an image that said, "This site best viewed in Lynx."

W3C

[FST (766202)]

...and yet they get 455(!) errors. That's not very good. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnytimes.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 [w3.org].

Re:W3C

[Bogtha (906264)]

fix whiney warnings that have no real world effect?

I knew somebody would pop up with this misconception. Did you know that the web has already been through this — not once but twice — and proven you wrong?

Netscape 2 was quite aggressive when it came to guessing when ampersands were mistakenly unencoded. Cue lots of people not bothering to do things correctly, and saying things exactly like you are — "What's the point? It makes no difference!"

Then Netscape 3 came out. It wasn't as aggressive as Netscape 2. All those people who cut corners had to rush to fix all of their pages. All the people who did it correctly the first time around didn't have to do any extra work.

Now Netscape 3 still guessed a little bit — if you left off the semicolon, it would pick up on it and guess correctly. So lots of the dumb people from the previous example didn't learn their lesson, and skipped the semicolon.

Can you guess what happened? Yep, that's right, Netscape 4 came out and broke all their pages again. And all the people who did things correctly laughed at them.

Sure, if you don't bother to do things right, today's major browsers will probably guess that you're an idiot and work around your bugs. But there's certainly no guarantee that tomorrow's browsers will do so. When you can do things correctly right now for no effort, why on earth would you risk incurring extra work in the future? Is it really so difficult to type & instead of &?

Valid Markup != Good Code

[DigitalisAkujin (846133)]

While the purists are going to argue that valid markup defines the quality of the code on a given website the reality of the real world always tends to rear it's ugly head and debunk that fantasy.

In the real world us web developers have to deal with interoperability on many different levels. We have to make sure the layout looks the same on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari with Windows XP & Vista, OSX, and Linux using the same code base. Most of this however has a lot to do with how talented your CSS developer is. And unfortunately for you kiddies, any less isn't perfect.

So to spell it out for those that don't know, here's the real difference between WYSIWYG and pure text:
In a WYSIWYG editor you tend to do everything the same way every time you do it. That means that all your links, images, and code snippets come from the same code base and therefore have all the same pitfalls and good points. Unfortunatly the wonderful world of DOM doesn't work that way. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and objects like Flash, Quicktime, and Java have very specific ways that they interact with each other and the browser and so what you generally find is that the reason you code by hand is not for the specific reason of coding by hand but simply put you really can not build good, quality websites with WYSIWYG editors. At some point you will most assuredly find yourself digging in the HTML.

Finally, on the topic of validating your markup. The Markup validaters that are out there are only good as tools of the trade and shouldn't be used as the end-all be-all certification of quality markup. They are tools that should be used by a web developer to run through and make sure they can be as close to valid as possible but I am willing to bet that out of the top 100 sites on the internet, the front page of all of them will produce Markup validation errors. The reason is simple: The validation rules are so restrictive that there is no point even worrying about them. It would be impossible to make a working website by being totally loyal to the markup rules.

Especially with the validator's stupidity in treating & signs in the href attribute of my a elements as the beginning of an entity which it's not! /rant >.>

Re:Valid Markup != Good Code

[Bogtha (906264)]

An & sign in a link to a URL isn't a syntax error

Yes, it is. Don't just take my word for it, take a look at what the HTML specification has to say on the matter [w3.org].

treating it as such would nullify all GET parameters after the first one.

You are confusing a URI with the representation of that URI within an HTML document. Just because it appears as & in the document, it doesn't mean that's what you end up with after it has been parsed.

Re:W3C

[clem.dickey (102292)]

Just what I was wondering: "Maybe, because they hand-code everything, they will pass the validation that all the fancy tools fail at so badly." Anyway, they are not alone. Here are the error couns for the Fortume top 20 companies (top of the Fortune 1000 list) manage on the w3c validator:

    53 walmart.com
    36 exxon.com
    26 chevron.com
    33 gm.com
    76 conocophillips.com
      0 ge.com
    29 ford.com
    52 citigroup.com
  105 bankofamerica.com
    26 att.com
    28 www.berkshirehathaway.com
      8 jpmorganchase.com
  148 aig.com
    55 hp.com
      0 ibm.com
  144 valero.com
      2 verizon.com
  180 mckesson.com
      5 cardinalhealth.com
1082 www.goldmansachs.com

Re:W3C

[Bogtha (906264)]

Also, they use <br/> in HTML 4 and it is telling them that they shouldn't do that because some web browsers will think it's wrong.

No, it's not telling them that some browsers will think it's wrong, it's telling them it is wrong. Validators don't check to make sure browsers can understand your document, they check if you have made any syntax errors. Writing <br/> in an HTML document is wrong, regardless of any particular browser's handling of it.

Re:W3C

[Bogtha (906264)]

<br /> is XHTML standard and <br> is the regular HTML 4 standard. Both are correct

No, one is correct for XHTML and incorrect for HTML, and one is incorrect for XHTML and correct for HTML. The NYTimes use HTML. That means the XHTML syntax is incorrect.

Re:W3C

[Bogtha (906264)]

while XHTML syntax is not strictly speaking correct HTML it is still valid HTML.

This is simply not true. It's incorrect and invalid.

What you may be thinking of is Appendix C of the XHTML 1.0 specification. It lays out a series of guidelines that minimise incompatibility with legacy user-agents. This means that it is relatively safe to transmit XHTML 1.0 documents following these guidelines as text/html. What it does not mean is that those XHTML 1.0 documents magically become valid HTML documents. They are not.

Re:W3C

[beav007 (746004)]

Be that as it may, Bogtha is correct. We aren't talking about what works here, we are talking about what the standard says. The standard for XHTML says to use a slash, the standard for HTML 4 says not to. That is the discussion, and really, the end of it.

Re:W3C

[dgatwood (11270)]

Agreed. <br /> should be, AFAIK, guaranteed to work in any working HTML parser because all HTML browsers have to ignore unknown properties in tags, including potentially that slash, in order to be forward-compatible with future changes to the specification. Assuming they included the space, then IMHO the W3C validator is being way too pedantic (as usual). If they left out the space (<br/>), then the W3C validator is right to warn about it, as that form does choke some HTML parsers, IIRC.

Re:W3C

[Bogtha (906264)]

all HTML browsers have to ignore unknown properties in tags

That reasoning would work if the people behind XML had chosen any other character to indicate empty elements. But unfortunately, they chose the slash. Not many people realise because browser support is rare, but a slash inside an opening tag means that it is the end of the tag and the contents follow. Basically, <foo/>x/ is equivalent to <foo>>x</foo> .

So no, while parsers that don't implement HTML fully might mistakenly treat it like an attribute, a parser that fully implements HTML cannot do so, and a validator certainly shouldn't.

the W3C validator is being way too pedantic (as usual).

What on earth do you think a validator is for, if not to point out syntax errors? Do you complain that your spelling checker is being pedantic when it tells you that you have misspelt something?

Re:W3C

[Bogtha (906264)]

It may or may not be improper American English, but "misspelt" is certainly correct English. Consult the OED [askoxford.com] if you don't believe me.

This is far from the first time I've had an ignorant American attempt to "correct" my proper English into your regional dialect. It's pretty annoying and reinforces negative aspects of your national stereotype.

Re:W3C

[dave420 (699308)]

The two are not mutually exclusive. It's perfectly possible to make even the most beautiful sites render accurately across all the major browsers and still contain perfectly valid markup. It smacks of being lazy, or just not knowing the importance of validating code.

Re:Benefits vs Issues

[rhavenn (97211)]

Let's look 'objectively' at this:
1. Handcoding takes a lot more effort and needs more 'actual' writers than before. So more techies keep their jobs in a recession.
Score: Hancoding 1: Dreamweaver: 0

No, given a good IDE with some basics it takes less effort. Every time I want to use Dreamweaver I end up losing some hair. It's a frustrating piece of software if you know what you're doing or want to do and it won't let you.

2. Hancoding requires extensive knowledge of all CSS and DHTML codes plus javascript/JScript. So only the really good techies get the job, and not some script monkey. Survival of fittest.
Score: Hancoding 2: Dreamweaver: 0

This is a good thing. Your designers SHOULD know the ins and outs of 80-90% of their code and tags.

3. Handcoding takes far more time than is necessary in a changing scenario of today's news. Effort not proportional to returns. As a shareholder, i would sue them for wasting money.
Score: Hancoding 2: Dreamweaver: 1

I doubt they hand code every story into the page. They have a template / publishing system for all articles / layouts. It's probably far, far faster to do it by hand then trying to wrap Dreamweaver into it.

4. Dreamweaver allows preview easily and pretty much automates repeatable tasks. Handcoding requires a Mechanical Turk.
Score: Hancoding 2: Dreamweaver: 2

dual monitors, sshfs mounted file system and vim will do it far faster then Dreamweaver.. alt-tab works okay if you're stuck with one monitor.

So its a tie.

Nope, I would say hand-coding: 3.5 and Dreamweaver .5

I appreciate NYTimes sticking to manual tasks for an electronic page as an end user and a techie.
I hate them for wasting my money as a shareholder.

I would applaud them for not wasting your money on software licenses and doing the job correctly.

How much work does that involve?

[menace3society (768451)]

How much work does that actually involve? I don't read their online edition, but I imagine that they have all their articles in a database and put its contents into an HTML wrapper. That involves coding the wrapper once, and maybe a couple of conversions in the article text to make it HTML-friendly. You can do this when the article is converted into the database, or you can do it on the fly in your scripts, but the point is it shouldn't be that difficult to do.

Dreamweaver is an excellent tool

[davebarnes (158106)]

Stupid comment by Vinh about Dreamweaver.
1. DW lets you code at the source code level if you choose.
2. DW is much faster--in Design View--at creating tables.
3. DW allows for flipping back and forth or split view.
4. DW does not rewrite your code (for the most part).

I use DW every day. I am not even conscious of flipping between the 2 views. Some things are done better in Design View and some in Code View.

CSS support is very good in DW.

I feel OLD.

[Valdrax (32670)]

wysiwyg (what you see is what you get)

I remember when this acronym was so frequently used as a selling point in the 80s that you wouldn't have had to explain it.

Well it looks great

[grrrl (110084)]

Personally, I have come to really enjoy reading the online NY Times (and I don't even live in the US).

The re-design they did a couple years ago is a pleasure to navigate, to read (I love the fonts) and while the photos are always top notch, I must say the award goes to whoever makes the graphs. They have the most fantastic and unique ways of presenting data - far beyond a boring Excel bar graph. I am really really impressed by the interesting and informative graphs which are often highly interactive, and I would love to know who thinks them up.

At the end of the day, they use templates (I believe he says as much in TFA, IIRC, I read it a week or so ago) and hand tweak the site to make it sure it stays cross-platform pretty. Each story has a similar layout so it can't be hard for them to simply tweak by hand where needed.

Doesn't everyone?

[consumer (9588)]

He doesn't mean that they hand-code every page -- he says very clearly that they use a CMS with templates. All he said is that they don't use a GUI tool to create the templates. This is true of just about any significant site. What is the imagined news here?

Re:text editors

[rossz (67331)]

No Way! If they coded it with emacs, the average reader wouldn't know what 12 keys to hit simultaneously to get to the story.

Link Management

[joeflies (529536)]

For all the pros/cons on using a web site editor package vs writing code in a text editor, there's one issue that's been overlooked - how to manage links in a website with a large degree of depth and complexity.

As much as it may work in principle to build highly optimized pages by hand markup, it must be a nightmare to make any changes to something as tightly constructed as a hardwired web site.

And that's not all...

[swm (171547)]

I hear they have people who hand-write the news stories: sentence by sentence, word by word. Can you imagine?

Yes and, err, no?

[stewbacca (1033764)]

Better results? Probably. Faster? No way. Never. Not gonna happen. Maybe they mean faster in the way that it is faster for guys who hand code lines of html all day to hand code lines of html all day because they don't have the first clue of how to use a WYSIWYG editor? If they know code so well, why not use Dreamweaver in pure code mode? The management tools of the suite alone are worth the ?extra? time.