[WEB4LIB] Re: As if lousy HTML editors weren't bad enough...

Thu Nov 5 14:27:16 EST 1998

>Ah, but </HEAD> and </HTML> (and even <HTML>, <HEAD>, and <BODY>) really
>are optional, just like </TD> and </TR>.  Just don't complain if a
>non-compliant browser misbehaves when you leave them out.

While that is correct, it may not always be right: The problem isn't the
webmaster complaining, but the audience complaining.  If you don't close
out all your </TD> or </TR> and the browser doesn't show your page at all,
you may be in the right to leave them out, but your visitor won't be able
to read your page and the average one will think it a coding problem and
move on.  If we are coding for the general public, as most libraries are,
then we need cross-platform coding as our priority, not technically correct
coding: we are forced to take into consideration in our coding the fact
that there are inconsistent problems/differences with interpreting HTML
coding by the various browsers.  It would be so nice if browsers followed
standards more closely, but alas, alack, and wail away, they do not :-(.

>As a counterpoint to this thoroughly brain-dead sort of utility (hint:
>cropping a GIF by a few pixels will result in more savings than removing

Yes!  So many people use, for instance, a B&W jpg but save it with a
"millions of colors" color depth, or don't crop a picture that could use
cropping, etc.  There's some neat online utilities that can shrink your
gif's 75% to 90%:
   http://useast.gifwizard.com/
   http://www.gifoptimizer.com/
   http://www.gifcruncher.com/
And some more info on optimizing images is at:
http://www.webreference.com/dev/gifanim/

TTFN,
David Merchant
Systems Librarian 
   Louisiana Tech University
Javascpt list administrator:
   www.mountaindragon.com/javascript/