[WEB4LIB] Re: Mozilla/Netscape 7.0 -- Students

[Peter C. Gorman]

At 7:34 PM -0700 7/24/02, Darryl Friesen wrote:
>>  We keep running into problems with Mozilla.  After some serious testing,
>>  trying different things, we are positive that it is a problem with
>>  Mozilla
>>  itself and not with our code.  The problem seems to specifically be with
>>  comments <!-- -->.  Mozilla is having various issues with the comments
>>  i.e. it does NOT read comments properly in all instances.
>
>It's a problem with the code (specifically, the comments), not the browser.
>>From the Comments section of the HTML 4 spec: (see
>http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/structure.html)
>
>     Comments in HTML have a complicated syntax that can be simplified
>     by following this rule: Begin a comment with "<!--", end it with
>     "-->", and do not use "--" within the comment.
>
>The code from the url you gave has "--" _within_ the comment itself; a
>definite no-no.  Is Mozilla a bit too picky?  Perhaps, but that's a Good
>Thing.  Forcing compliance with the standard can only make the web better.

The unsimplified explanation is that the markup for comments is 
composed of two parts: a processing instruction <![stuff here]> 
containing (only) a comment --[stuff here]--. In HTML, one rarely 
sees processing instructions that aren't just containers for 
comments, although the DOCTYPE declaration is one (the only?) 
example. So, a better statement of the rule may be "comments start 
and end with '--' and must be enclosed within a processing 
instruction '<!>'." Anything after the second "--" will be taken to 
be part of a processing instruction which browsers will 
understandably have a hard time understanding.

There are also a number of validation errors on the page in question 
- overlapping elements, etc. that could be causing some problems and 
are easily fixable. It looks like the comments have already been 
fixed, and the page seems to be displaying properly with Mozilla 
(Mac).

-- 
_______________________________
Peter C. Gorman
Senior Technology Librarian
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Library Technology Group
pgorman at library.wisc.edu
(608) 265-5291

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