[WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences

[Pons, Lisa (PONSLM)]

Dreamweaver, I don't believe, generates invalid code by default. Depending
on your doc definition, and what you are after, it does fairly well. You do
however,have to validate it and make changes.

Also: you can customize it so that it does not rewrite certain tags or other
parts of your code, though MX seems much more buggy than 4.0 in some areas.

I have created xhtml pages with MX (though you can train 4.0), and after a
few minor tweaks, they validate just fine through the WC3 validator.

I don't think there will ever be an editor that will replace the knowledge
of the webmaster, but they sure do save time in managing the site- through
the use of templates, code reuse, and the ability to quickly add new pages.

My .02


Lisa Pons

Webmaster
University Libraries
University of Cincinnati
lisa.pons at uc.edu
(513)556-1431

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Gray [mailto:cpgray at library.uwaterloo.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 11:38 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences


Dreamweaver, for its MX release, co-operated with the Dreamweaver Task
Force <http://www.webstandards.org/act/campaign/dwtf/> set up by the Web
Standards Project (WaSP).  WaSP's statement is "Macromedia released
Dreamweaver MX in May 2002, offering vastly improved standards compliance
and accessibility over previous versions."

Another area where non-standard code still lurks is in the HTML
automatically generated by various Web application platforms (ColdFusion,
Zope, etc.).

Chris Gray
Systems Analyst
University of Waterloo Library

On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Thomas Dowling wrote:

> 
> >
> >So instead of coding for the browser of the moment (or the year),
> >why not code to W3C specification and demand that the browser vendors
> >support the spec?  ("Demand" in multiple senses: tell them they must;
> >don't use their browser if they don't; etc.)
> 
> 
> As an old hand-coder, I find myself in the dark about what mass-market
page 
> editors do in this regard.  In vi, emacs, textpad, etc. we can code to any

> standard we choose.  But if someone drops a copy of Dreamweaver or 
> Frontpage on your desk and says, "you're the new library web designer"
what 
> options do you really have?
> 
> A couple years ago, I tested copies of several of the popular HTML editors

> of the day and came to the conclusion that most of them generated invalid 
> HTML by default; several were incapable of being made to generate valid 
> markup in any circumstance, all were willing to allow invalid markup, and 
> all encouraged presentational hacks (<blockquote> for indenting, etc. - 
> which I'm appalled to see is still in Mozilla Composer).
> 
> I greatly fear that the bad coding practices fostered by bad browsers now 
> mostly gone away have been entrenched if not perpetuated by editing 
> programs that A) sacrifice good code for overdone backward compatiblity, 
> and B) try to put a Word-like editing interface on something that is very 
> much not a word processing task.
> 
> 
> Thomas Dowling
> OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
> tdowling at ohiolink.edu
> 
>