Help Beta Test Slashdot CSS

After almost 8 years, Slashdot's HTML is finally getting an overhaul. For now the changes are almost entirely under the hood, as we migrate the current skin to CSS. Slashdot itself will migrate in the next few weeks, but for now, we'd appreciate it if people who understand CSS could take a look at Slashcode. If you use a browser that lets you select a stylesheet, you can take a look at that site with the Slashdot CSS Skin. Keep in mind that Slashcode doesn't look exactly like Slashdot, so there will be some differences between that site, and the final version that will appear on Slashdot. We're mainly looking for feedback on compatibility issues and blatant bugs. You can use our our SF bug tracker to submit bug reports. Thanks for your help. Once we move Slashdot, work will begin on a new look & feel. If you have ideas, you could start playing with the CSS stylesheets now!

Just one question...

[suso]

After almost 8 years, Slashdot's HTML is finally getting an overhaul.

What is a HTML?

Re:Just one question...

[JoeBar]

What is a joke?

Re:Just one question...

[Kent Recal]

Cool, is this the +2-Insightful thread?

Sigh

[suso]

Of course I know what HTML is. I was trying to be funny (appearently wasted effort). The joke is that HTML is old. For slashdot to only be using HTML makes it old. Something so old that people forgot about it.

Oh nevermind.

Re:Sigh

[GoClick]

I knew you were kidding *pat* *pat* *pat* there there....

So when are articles going to get dates with years on them?

Re:Sigh

[daniil]

Ages ago. Go to Preferences -> Homepage (or just click here [slashdot.org]), and set Date/Time Format to something other than the default. And then forget to click Save.

css!!

[jlebrech]

If you do change to CSS beware as some CSS is IE specific, like list trees.

Re:css!!

[MyLongNickName]

Doesn't everyone on Slashdot use IE?

(sorry)

Re:css!!

[Ubergrendle]

Nah, we're all still on Mosaic. Slashdot is the only site we can still visit coincidentally, and the lack of flash support means we don't have to read MS adverts ontop of Linux articles.

Re:css!!

[qw(name)]

The "design for all browsers" paradigm isn't a good one. It promotes the use of non-compliant browsers. It's much better to design to the standards no matter what.

Re:css!!

[cybersaga]

Thank goodness everyone's customers use standards compliant browsers. Whew! Your theory would be totally ridiculous if they didn't.

[/sarcasm]

Re:css!!

[mrchaotica]

If you think about it, his theory would be totally unnecessary if they did.

Incidentally, I agree with him -- designing web sites for broken browsers is like giving illegal immigrants drivers' licenses: it's stupid and it doesn't fix the underlying problem.

Re:css!!

[chromaphobic]

Right, so the intelligent thing would be to explain to my clients that it's Microsoft's fault and not mine that the site I just designed for them doesn't display properly for 9 out of 10 of their customers? After all, I followed the standards and it would be stupid not to!

"Sorry Mr. Client, standards evangelism is far more important to me than your customers. Now, when should I be expecting payment?" Yeah, that'll fly.

I think I'll keep using my current methodology: Design to the standards first, then add whatever hacks are needed to handle the various browser bugs in secondary stylesheets to ensure the widest possible compatability across as many browsers and platforms as I can.

Call me crazy, but keeping the client and their customers satisfied (and, as a result, making the site display properly for as many visitors as I possibly can, rather than just those that use a "standards compliant" browser) and subsequently getting paid for my work is more important to me than beating the standards drum.

Re:css!!

[CowboyBob500]

Personally I design to standards and then detail the charges for the time it takes me to fix it on IE in the final invoice. Then the client knows exactly how much the use of IE is costing them as a percentage of the total cost of the project.

It doesn't cost them anymore than before, but it really opens their eyes.

Bob

Re:css!!

[CowboyBob500]

I don't just target IE. I give a complete breakdown of costs for all things on the invoice. But unlike most people instead of just detailing "web pages" or something, I break down what the cost of development was for each browser.

Again, it doesn't cost the client anything more than normal, and I have plenty of clients who come back for more business.

Bob

Re:css!!

[Watts Martin]

The way I design web pages -- and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, doing something very radical here! -- is to design for Gecko-based browsers and Safari first, because they very rarely show major deviances from one another or standards. Then I take the design to Windows IE and tweak the style sheets to account for anything that broke there, which is usually pretty minimal--frustrating, but its quirks are known and well documented. And I make sure the page is readable and usable in Lynx. At the end of the day, I have fine standards-compliant XHTML and CSS that works everywhere from Firefox to the Sidekick.

In almost all cases you can make IE happy without having to seriously compromise. There are broken browsers I'm perfectly happy to ignore: pre-Mozilla Netscape, pre-5.0 IE, NetPositive for BeOS, HotJava. These are ones that you simply can't tweak for; generating web pages that renders perfectly on all of those platforms can be done, as OS News proves -- and can only be done by creating hideously bloated web pages where 70-80% of what's being sent to the browsers is markup, as, uh, OS News proves. (The term "pathologically compliant" comes to mind.)

Standards Problems

[Oculus Habent]

I discussed this with a friend some six years ago. The problem with standards like HTML and CSS can be summed up in one word:

MAY

By putting the word may into a standard, you make the standard non-standard. If you can't reliably depend upon CSS to render a dashed line on a border, why do you even provide it? Two completely compliant browsers can give you a different picture, depending on their choice to implement optional components.

There are enough issues with non-compliant browsers that we don't need to build issues into the standards!

Re:Standards Problems

[Haeleth]

If you can't reliably depend upon CSS to render a dashed line on a border, why do you even provide it?

Do share: just how do you propose to get a blind user's screen reader to render a dashed line on a border?

Wait, wasn't that what you meant? Oh dear, it looks like you're going to have to concede that you don't actually want CSS to guarantee anything of the sort, doesn't it?

Two completely compliant browsers can give you a different picture, depending on their choice to implement optional components.

Oh lord, you're not another of these clueless people who think that the idea of CSS is to make sure sites look identical everywhere, are you?

The fact that two completely compliant browsers can produce totally different results is a feature. You might want your website to have green text on a red background in letters five pixels high, but if I'm nearsighted and colourblind, I damn well don't want my browser to render it that way! As a less extreme example, you might want your site to be laid out in three vertical columns, but if I'm browsing it on a mobile phone, I sure won't object if my browser decides to render it as one column instead.

Pixel-identical rendering? You can keep it. I want to use fonts I can read, colours I can stand, layouts I can navigate. CSS lets me do all that just by providing my own stylesheet. You know, I'm really not terribly unhappy with that.

mod parent up

[TheJorge]

Cheers. Save perfectly identical rendering is not the realm of HTML/CSS. There are plenty of technologies out there that allow full control over layout. A bitmap comes to mind.

But I think there is a point somewhere in there to be made. Remember HTML 1.0? Simply the fact that tags like STRONG, H1-H6, and ADDRESS exists points pretty clearly to the intent to allow a site to describe what was being presented but allow the browser to determine how it was presented. Of course, there were a load of problems with this and people's ideas of how it should be used, and we like to think we've come a long way. But in truth, we're still doing the same things.

Rather than trying to be the control-freak with everything exactly positioned, it's far more useful (and elegant to program) to have a site which can do without X, Y, or Z and still convey all the information it did before. A site that degrades gracefully may not impress the casual user, but the casual user will be able to use it.

Look at the most successful commercial sites out there today. Google's front page and search results are viewable in every possible browser I can come up with. eBay is one of the ugliest sites in existence, but its content is available to nearly any browser. Hit amazon.com with Lynx and you can still buy things.

Successful web sites are not pretty. They're functional. CSS is a tool to make more functional pages. Yes, you can also make them prettier, but if you set out with that as your goal, you'll fail the more important one.

Re:css!!

[mrchaotica]

No, you should design for standards, and then sit back and relax. Let it look suboptimal in non-compliant browsers; it'll give them incentive to upgrade.

This, of course, assumes that the bugs in the non-compliant browsers result in only cosmetic defects; however, I would say that if something is so broken in IE that it's genuinely unusable, then you should try approaching the problem in a completely different way.

Re:css!!

[Corbie]

To a certain extent I aggree with you - especially in regards to certain cosmetic things looking suboptimal in non-compliant browsers. However, this design perrogative is only available when you, the designer, are directly making the calls for what goes and what doesnt. In the case of working for paying clients, or poorly-informed employers with phobias for non-microsoft platforms, this is in many cases not an option. I heartlily beleive that it is our duty as designers and programmers to educate those we w

Re:css!!

[bmongar]

"Design for standards" paradigm isn't a good one. It promotes looking for consultants that won't drive away business.

Too many IE users to not work around IE bugs.

[hellfire]

Allow me to list people who would be denied the goodness of slashdot if you didn't create something that allowed IE to be compatible:

1) People who for some stupid reason or another can only use IE at work and don't have enough control of their PC to install something better.
2) Geeks and nerds who do not fall into the category of computer nerd. There are science geeks, english geeks, political geeks, math geeks, but just because one is a geek about one thing doesn't mean they are geek about computers.

I'm all for scolding IE for not complying to standards, but since MS's philosophy of embrace, extend and extinguish is still in use in IE, don't allow yourself to be extinguished by designing a page that doesn't work around I.E. bugs and cut off major portions of your audience.

Re:Fortunately

[arkanes]

Fortunately, in today's world it is possible to use standards AND design for all (modern) browsers at the same time!

Well - no. Not unless what you actually mean is "use a small subset of CSS 1". And even then there are minor incosistencies and differences that can end up biting you (although they often won't). If you want your site to work in IE, and you do, then you either need to stick with minimal CSS support, or have forked or otherwise hacked up CSS. Period. Additionally, if you want to support IE 5

Re:Fortunately

[NickFitz]

<rant>

Absolute nonsense. I implement sites for major commercial organisations which use standards-based CSS 1 and 2.1, and they work just fine cross-modern-browser - IE-Win, IE-Mac, Opera, Firefox, Safari, you name it. And when I say "just fine", I mean "look identical to the pixel", as well as scaling seamlessly for visually impaired users, being fully accessible to assistive technologies, having semantically pure markup and degrading gracefully in ye olde browsers.

On my current project I combine floating, absolute positioning and just about every other CSS technique in the book, and out of 1800+ lines of CSS across the entire site, just 13 are to cater for IE's brokenness.

Everything one needs to know to make standards-compliant sites that work in today's browsers is out there (including avoiding the IE-5-Win box model problem), but many "web designers" are so lacking in an understanding of the technologies with which they work that they can't or won't improve. I see new sites produced using nested tables, for goodness sake; I used those techniques myself last century when there was no alternative, but these people really need to get with the programme.

It's the same problem that leads to so many useless implementations in any field: the vast majority of people are unwilling to undertake a process of constantly improving and refining their skills, and the employers aren't sufficiently well-informed to make the distinction between those who work hard to make the best possible use of the available technologies, and those who read a book about HTML in 1997 and have been marking time ever since.

Luckily things are now changing, and clueful organisations are demanding people who can work with standards. A lot of people who think they understand how to produce a web page are going to be looking for alternative employment over the next year or so unless they catch up on the advances made over the last few years.

</rant>

Thank you for listening; have a nice day :-)

Re:Fortunately

[Nurf]

I like the sound of what you say. I would love to be able to do CSS web sites that work on everything.

I am a very technical guy who is usually designing and building hardware and software. However, I am in a small company, and am going to end up producing a web site for it whether I like it or not.

Soo.. could you provide a few links or names of books that I read that would allow me to make web sites in the way you describe? Assume someone who is used to being given a pile of books in a new subject, and has

Re:Fortunately

[spectre_240sx]

Taken from A List Apart:

"Perhaps the biggest benefit of this particular example is the bandwidth savings:

        * Savings per page without caching the CSS file: ~2KB per request
        * Savings per page with caching the CSS file: ~9KB per request

Though a few KB doesn't sound like a lot of bandwidth, let's add it up. Slashdot's FAQ, last updated 13 June 2000, states that they serve 50 million pages in a month. When you break down the figures, that's ~1,612,900 pages per day or ~18 pages per second. Bandwidth savings are as follows:

        * Savings per day without caching the CSS files: ~3.15 GB bandwidth
        * Savings per day with caching the CSS files: ~14 GB bandwidth

Most Slashdot visitors would have the CSS file cached, so we could ballpark the daily savings at ~10 GB bandwidth. A high volume of bandwidth from an ISP could be anywhere from $1 - $5 cost per GB of transfer, but let's calculate it at $1 per GB for an entire year. For this example, the total yearly savings for Slashdot would be: $3,650 USD!

Remember: this calculation is based on the number of pages served as of 13 June, 2000. I believe that Slashdot's traffic is much heavier now, but even using this three-year-old figure, the money saved is impressive."

Re:css!!

[VJ42]

That shouldn't be a problem if the developers remember to use the w3c CSS validatior:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ [w3.org]

But seeing as they don't bother using even the html validator I'm not counting on it.

Re:css!!

[qw(name)]

There already appears to be a problem with validating Slashcode.com's HTML 4.01 Strict main page.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .slashcode.com%2F [w3.org]

Will the beta bring the site down?

[geomon]

Just about every site remodel has problems. I have just gone over the list of things I have issues with on our local public school's new website. Most of my comments have to do with broken capabilites. I'm sure that the folks at /. have tested this system in a non-production environment, but things are bound to go wrong at first. The unfortunate thing about my local school district's website has been access. How much of the /. staff resources are going to be committed to the rollout and how soon are problems going to be addressed?

Considering the fact that it took nearly two minutes for the form to arrive makes me think we are in for a bumpy ride!

Re:Will the beta bring the site down?

[mspohr]

It looks like /. has been slashdotted (slashdotti?).

Re:Will the beta bring the site down?

[liam193]

Slashcode has been slashdotted!

For all those wishing to read the original article, the contents have been replicated in a modified format here [slashdot.org].

Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[AKAImBatman]

CmdrTaco? I have exactly two words for you.

This. Rocks.

Kudos on finally bringing Slashcode into the 21st century! The Slashdot style over on Slashcode looks absolutely wonderful, with none of the chunky layout problems that plague Slashdot itself! What I'd love to know is, how much bandwidth are you saving by using CSS? Many of the experiments done to date suggest that you could cut your bandwith usage by 30-50%! Will this update usher in a new era of faster page loading? Inquiring minds want to know! :-)

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[fshalor]

It's also slashdoted...

LOL!!!

I love this site. hehe...

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[Crazy Man on Fire]

Considering the fact that the Slashcode servers are now a pile of smoldering ash, I'm guessing they haven't saved much bandwidth

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[jpostel]

CmdrTaco - "Do you smell something?"

CowboyNeal - "Oh Sh*t! The slashcode server's on fire!"

ROFL

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[tgd]

*one day passes*

Zonk - "Oh Sh*t! The slashcode server's on fire!"

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[Malc]

You would think Cmdr Taco would know enough about the /. effect that he wouldn't inflict it upon his own servers. He must be some kind of masochist!

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[JasonUCF]

So I'm going to be modded as flamebait here but um, honestly, "This Rocks"? My first reaction is, ABOUT GODAMNED TIME?

I mean, couldn't they have found any time in the past 8 years of triple posting the same article, not performing any due diligence regarding fact checking, etc... to fucking fix their html???

Thanks Rob Malda et all, welcome to the 21st century!

Mod me down, but you know it's true.

 

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[XO]

apparently slashcode is so incredibly bad spaghetti that it has taken this long to actually work with it. blargh.

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[sootman]

No WML. Less styles than CSS Zen Garden. Lame.

Re:Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[Seanasy]

Don't get too excited [w3.org].

HTML just wants to be valid. Is that so wrong?

And why not go for XHTML Strict, or even Transitional?

Maybe adding a little JS ...

[TeXMaster]

for things like collapsing articles to header only and expanding them to full article? (And user options for the initial view)

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[IMarvinTPA]

Got it finally: http://greasemonkeyed.com/tag/slashdot [greasemonkeyed.com]

IMarv

No logon

[liam193]

Is there a separate user database for slashcode? Logon doesn't seem to work and even a "send my password" doesn't recognize the login id. Perhaps this is just a Beta/Test issue, but it would be nice to test with real-world configurations and customizations.

Re:No logon

[WalksOnDirt]

Sounds like the Slashdot main page got hacked, adding this artcle with a link to harvest Slashdot logins. B-)

The apocalypse draws nigh.

[funny-jack]

from the oh-my-god-it's-actually-happening dept.

You can say that again.

Re:The apocalypse draws nigh.

[aug24]

Oh my god it's actually happening!

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot going to CSS? Has hell frozen over!? Windows gone GPL!? What's next?

Re:OMFG

[schon]

Slashdot going to CSS? Has hell frozen over!? Windows gone GPL!? What's next?

I'd answer, but I'm too busy trying to catch these damn flying pigs!

Re:OMFG

[FireFury03]

I'm hoping that we're going to see XHTML1.1 strict compliance on slashdot one day...

XHTML

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious -- not attacking or anything -- but why HTML 4 as opposed to XHTML 1 Strict? Is it because of the content type issues with a certain browser, strict XML compliance was too difficult, or simply that only purists ever seem to care? ;-)

Re:XHTML

[schon]

but why HTML 4 as opposed to XHTML 1 Strict?

Here is a good list of reasons [utvinternet.ie] why HTML4 is preferable to XHTML.

Re:XHTML

[spongman]

that has to be the lamest excuse for a list of reasons why not to use something.

Re:XHTML

[mstyne]

Hey that guy has a website on the Internet he must be right

Re:XHTML

[slcdb]

That is one of the most ridiculous articles on web authoring that I've ever read. The author's logic seems to mainly stem from the fact that IE has extremely poor standards compliance. Of course it has poor support for XHTML: when IE was last released (6.0) XHTML was still brand-new.

This guy is seriously arguing that people should not adopt a now mature standard, because one aging piece of software hasn't been updated in four years? He just needs to get over his love affair with IE and realize that the rest of the world is still progressing.

Addmitedly, I don't know when the article was written, but that's only because the author didn't date it. To argue that XHTML is bad because old UAs poorly support it is truly a case of the tail wagging the dog. I can hardly believe that the author doesn't understand that.

Re:XHTML

[slcdb]

So are you saying we should ignore them and focus on developing standards-compliant sites that aren't accessible to 80% of your user base?

No. I'm only saying that it's not wise to implore people to avoid using XHTML, which renders just fine in IE by the way, and instead use an older standard which has no future.

Extra tags needed to embed scripts? Well, if that's just too much work for you, then stick with HTML. See how much work it is for you in "8-10 years" to convert all of your HTML content to XHTML (a

Re:XHTML

[ZeroExistenZ]

# Lot's of other sites use it, so it must be good.

Lot's of Lemmings are jumping off cliffs, do you want to be a Lemming?

Lemming suicide is fiction [snopes.com]

The Big Move

[qw(name)]

It's good to see that you're moving on to something more modern. HTML 3.2 is very antiquated and isn't CSS friendly. It would more work to move to XHTML 1.0 Transitional but I would think that it would pay off big dividends in the future.

Re:The Big Move

[Sentry21]

I'm curious as to what you mean when you say 'HTML 3.2 ... isn't CSS friendly'. the CSS1 recommendation is actually older than the HTML 3.2 recommendation by about a month. Sure, it's not as CSS-friendly as, say, HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.x, but I don't think 3.2 is explicitly unfriendly.

Slashdot.... testing???

[FortKnox]

After almost 8 years, Slashdot's HTML is finally getting an overhaul.

I'm more surprised that after 8 years, slashdot is testing something on a machine that isn't the main server.

Seriously, while you guys are changing things, how about changing it so ALL code changes go through regression testing along with some major user testing before you drop ut into the production servers. We all dislike 503s, and we have see a TON of bugs pop up (like last weeks 'unable to see comments' for several hours).

Re:Slashdot.... testing???

[tgd]

This is a site that hires, or at least otherwise uses the services of, Zonk.

And you're surprised they don't test anything?

I groan saying this...

[Moridineas]

but...

Is slashcode slashdotted??

Re:I groan saying this...

[wbren]

No, the new site design is just a blank gray window with a never-ending browser status animation culminating in a message box that says "Host unavailable". I bet that only took three lines of CSS code.

Re:I groan saying this...

[T-Ranger]

My bet is that they rewrote slash in Ruby on Rails, and as a result it actually takes negative storage space. slashcode isnt realy slashdotted, the extra hard drives that are popping out of that server have knocked out the ethernet line....

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Finally, Slashdot Slashdotted, Literally!

[loconet]

Add to that the fact that Slashdot is moving to css, Apple using Intel, Apple Shipping 2 Button Mice, Debian 3.1 was released and this year seems to be turning into be the pivotal point for hell to hold the winter olympics.

Re:Finally, Slashdot Slashdotted, Literally!

[iluvcapra]

Here we are at the apocalypse, and we still never got to play Duke Nukem Forever.

Yeah, I went there.

Re:Finally, Slashdot Slashdotted, Literally!

[TeknoHog]

So will this be the year of Linux on the desktop?

But...

[daniil]

...does it validate?

Browser compatibility testing

[Hulkster]

I tested the CSS version with wget and it looks good ... ;-)

Does the new version...

[Pivot]

Come with a spell checker for submitters?

Re:Does the new version...

[JHromadka]

Yes, it's called Safari [apple.com].

Who is Making the Changes?

[eno2001]

Is this in response to that big story last year where someone actually redid Slashdot's main page in CSS to show just how easy it would be to do? Kind of funny in a way because people who usually want to prove how easy something is to accomplish have no idea of just how much glue sits behind the scenes. That's usually what makes these kinds of changes so difficult and fraught with rendering errors, coding slips and the like. Even moreso when you only have a handful of decent people working on the system and a ton of mediocre people making up the majority of the development team. When it comes to systems this big and complicated, it's a wonder they work at all. So who will be making these CSS changes?

Re:Who is Making the Changes?

[omega9]

Just for reference:

The "someone" that redid Slashdot was A List Apart [alistapart.com], more commonly refered to as ALA. It was a two part series.

• Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards [alistapart.com]
• Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards Part II [alistapart.com]

ALA is an awesome sight for real-world web development. Also interesting is that they've recently redesigned their site as well and moved to Ruby On Rails [rubyonrails.org] in the process.

Poetic Justic

[SumDog]

You know I can't seem to get to the site. Ah the slashdot effect on...well...slashdot. It's almost poetic

File not found

[CubicleView]

Hi, could everyone stop clicking on the link for a minute so I can open it, thanks.

Dupe

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

This has already been done, about two years ago. See http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot2/ [alistapart.com] and particularly http://www.uwplatt.edu/web/webstandards/slashdot.h tml [uwplatt.edu]

Re:Dupe

[Phroggy]

Sorry, but you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

Taking a static tag-soup HTML page and rewriting it to use compliant code and CSS is a major chore, and that's what was done in those two examples. But to convert a completely dynamic site like Slashdot is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. CmdrTaco has been saying for YEARS that they'd like Slashdot to be redone with valid HTML and CSS, but it's just been too massive a task, and nobody else has stepped up to the plate for the same reason.

So no,

Re:Dupe

[PhilHibbs]

No, you're a sex bot.

Did /code get /.'d?

[QuietLagoon]

I get no response from server....

You slashdotted Slashcode!

[MarkEst1973]

You insensitive clod!

Hell froze over

[paulius_g]

Damn,

It's getting cold down here.

      - Satan

Still buggy - wait for new slash sites

[Lord Satri]

I decided to make my dreams come true and have my own slashsite. Wanting to migrate my successful GIS / RS mailing list to slash. http://www.matox.com/agisrs [matox.com]

SlashCSS is not "ready yet". I though it would be easy to setup the site, but even with a lot of help from the slash mailing lists and http://www.lottadot.com/ [lottadot.com] . A few weeks will be required for our launch announcement.

SlashCSS is really a great step in the right direction, however, my advice, if you're planning building a slash site, wait a little whil

Bug Report

[johnkoer]

I tried this and it seems to be kicking out quite a few duplicate stories. Is that normal?

in other news

[rayde]

Duke Nuken Forever is being released! On the Phantom Gaming Console. Which will be running Longhorn!

seriously though, this is a good thing, hopefully this will allow for user-chosen themes, etc. and way to get http://it.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]to not look like baby poo.

WOW!

[N3wsByt3]

Merely 8 years, and the code already gets an update!

With the high level of IT nerds around here, one can only guess what's next! Maybe something wild... like maybe slashdot will become readable when you use Firefox, for instance!

The skype is the limit!

huh?

[bad_outlook]

finally, being as /. is such a tech site, it's about time to bring things into this century. Hell, I rework my site constantly, I still can't believe /. went so long with old/outdated/non-validated code. perhaps it could be a quarterly thing to update things in the future.

OMG!

[Comatose51]

What have the editors done!? They posted a link back to Slashdot so now they're going to Slashdot Slashdot and create a Internet blackhole where the same articles get posted over and over again!

I kid, I kid.

Let me use Sans fonts

[Tester]

Using the layout as slashcode, it seems that the font is specified to be Serif everywhere... I much prefer to read on-screen stuff with a sans font, which is my default. Please dont specify the font and just use my browser's default... Please remove "font-family: serif;" from the body{}

Thank you,

Tester

Re:Let me use Sans fonts

[hackstraw]

Please dont specify the font and just use my browser's default... Please remove "font-family: serif;" from the body{}

I guess that is a valid request, but you are in the minority, and slashdot actually does fonts "correctly".

For most people, a proportionally spaced serif font is easier to read for the body of a document, and a proportionally spaced sans-serif font is better for thing like headlines or section titles. However, after just typing that I went to a number of popular news sites, and they use sans

Re:Let me use Sans fonts

[Psiren]

For most people, a proportionally spaced serif font is easier to read for the body of a document, and a proportionally spaced sans-serif font is better for thing like headlines or section titles.

That's generally true for print, I'm not so sure about on screen reproduction (anyone care to offer any case studies?). The theory is that the serifs are supposed to help guide your eye, so it's easier to see what the letter is. However, given the relatively low resolution of screens, it doesn't seem to work as well

Full text

[IainHere]

Since the site is slashdotted, here's the article text (it's funny, laugh!)

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
                        "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="description" content="Slash + CSS -- article related to Slash.">
<title>Slashcode | Slash + CSS</title>

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/base.css" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/comments.css" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/ostgnavbar.css" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/slashcode.css" title="Slashcode" >
<link rel="Alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/slashdot.css" title="Slashdot" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="//www.slashcode.com/print.css" >

<!-- start template: ID 169, ssihead;misc;default -->

Sorry - I'm not allowed to show you any more because it violats the posting filter. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment.

html 4.01? are you serious?

[portscan]

let's see:
HTML 3.2 [w3.org] - 1997
HTML 4.01 [w3.org] - 1999 (!)
XHTML 1.0 [w3.org] - 2000, revised in 2002
XHTML 1.1 [w3.org] - 2001

Welcome to the year 1999. The future is now. While I appreciate the efforts of the Slashcode developers, I would like to point out that it is still possible to write spectacularly awful code in HTML 4.01. Yes, it is possible to do so in XHTML, but it is more difficult. My one request to the developers (and believe me, you will thank me when maintaining this code base) is to use <div> tags, lists, and CSS positioning for layout instead of tables. It makes your code so much cleaner and easier to edit. In fact, to me it is the main benefit of CSS.

(If you remember this article [alistapart.com], posted to /. a while back, it goes through some of the steps of converting a static image of a /. page to XHTML and CSS)

Re:Why do this?

[Pike]

Um, because: [alistapart.com]

Though a few KB doesn't sound like a lot of bandwidth, let's add it up. Slashdot's FAQ, last updated 13 June 2000, states that they serve 50 million pages in a month. When you break down the figures, that's ~1,612,900 pages per day or ~18 pages per second. Bandwidth savings are as follows:

* Savings per day without caching the CSS files: ~3.15 GB bandwidth
* Savings per day with caching the CSS files: ~14 GB bandwidth

Most Slashdot visitors would have the CSS file cached, so we could ballpark the daily savings at ~10 GB bandwidth. A high volume of bandwidth from an ISP could be anywhere from $1 - $5 cost per GB of transfer, but let's calculate it at $1 per GB for an entire year. For this example, the total yearly savings for Slashdot would be: $3,650 USD!

Remember: this calculation is based on the number of pages served as of 13 June, 2000. I believe that Slashdot's traffic is much heavier now, but even using this three-year-old figure, the money saved is impressive.

Re:Why do this?

[FireFury03]

Remember: this calculation is based on the number of pages served as of 13 June, 2000. I believe that Slashdot's traffic is much heavier now, but even using this three-year-old figure, the money saved is impressive.

For extra bandwidth savings they should also think about using client-side XSLT. Send all the styling XHTML data to the clients as an XSLT stylesheet along with the CSS stylesheet, both the XSLT and CSS get cached by the browser and from then on you're just shifting the actual _content_ over the

Re:Why do this?

[farker haiku]

Remember: this calculation is based on the number of pages served as of 13 June, 2000. I believe that Slashdot's traffic is much heavier now, but even using this three-year-old figure, the money saved is impressive.


Welcome to 2005.

Re:Sorry for being a luddite but..

[Lardmonster]

"I just want to be able to read articles and comments. Period."

Sure.

But blind / partially sighted / physically disabled folks want to read articles and comments too. Period.

And CSS helps make websites more accessible.

Re:Sorry for being a luddite but..

[Proteus]

Who cares? Three main groups:

People with disabilities prefer CSS because it allows them to trivally alter layout and visual presentation in a way that works for them. For example, some people have trouble seeing low-contrast presentations; they can insert their own CSS into a CSS-aware page to make any site readable.

The folks who pay for the bandwidth tend to like CSS because it costs less to serve (properly implemented, that is). CSS separates style from content, so the style can be cached while smaller content pages are tranferred on request. This makes a better end-user experience and costs less to provide.

Developers and designers like CSS because it follows the excellent practice of separating view from data. It's easier for a developer to make changes to the underlying code because they worry less about breaking the view; likewise, a designer can make layout tweaks without affecting other areas of code. Clean separation makes fewer bugs.

Re:finally... lol

[joeljkp]

Here's one explanation, from CmdrTaco's Journal [slashdot.org]:

"Pudge has been working a lot on that problem. Specifically we've got scripts to fix HTML in all editor & user contributed content spaces. A lot of this is under way already. Old comments are being automatically fixed in the background. HTML in articles from 1998 is being corrected. Scripts are working very hard. And in some cases, tired editors have been re-reading stories from 1998 to correct HTML errors that boggle the mind. None of this is perfect, so don't be to surprised if you find something wonky. Feel free to mail me URLs if you see it. We've got almost 60,000 articles, 900,000 users, and like 13 million comments. There will be mistakes."