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My concern I suppose I will begin with, Validation (WC3). I have meticulously validated to XHTML 1.0 strict! Considering I have a fairly dynamic interactive site it took a while, I was so pleased with my self I had some wine to celebrate! :)
Does building with standards guarantee that pages are rendered correctly for all who visit? or should I con 50 people and 50 systems to have a looksee?
Thanks!
Although not all browsers are compliant IMO the pressure is now to be so. We can expect better standard compliance in the future.
Standards will give your site a longer life; based on some of the non-standard tweeks don't always work with the new version of the browser tweeked for and that standards are 'forwards' compliant.
It is always worth checking your site in different browsers to be sure nobody gets an unreadable mess. Evolt dot org is a good place to get alternative browsers
zoo
I went to the Wikipedia List of Content Management Systems (Google for "List_of_content_management_systems",) and used the Firefox WebDeveloper tool to submit the home page of each and every CMS to the W3C. Not one of them validated. LOTS of maroon. In fact, several made the validator so sick it had to go have lie-down.
Nevertheless, the majority of them work pretty well in most browsers. Some of them, by doing some truly obscene hacks.
I once wrote a PHP-Nuke site. I had to, quite literally, rewrite Nuke to make it validate. Every time I added a new module, it broke the validator, and sometimes even adding content would do it.
I think it was worth it. The site exhibited a tremendously consistent experience across every browser I tested it against. But boy, what a lot of work!
The main reason I wanted conformance was to add accessibility to the site. Most sites that won't validate are also not accessible. This is especially true of most CMS sites (which are getting very popular these days.)
I would recommend that you use Firefox, and test constantly with the Webdeveloper toolbar.
If you just stay conformant throughout the process of developing your site, then you will reap the rewards, or at least, your visitors will.
Does building with standards guarantee that pages are rendered correctly for all who visit?
NO!
The standards keep changing, and with deprecation what is "standard" today could easily be non-standard tomorrow. If you really want to be cross-browser compatible to the max, so to speak, keep the HTML simple!
Matt
I have added the dev toolbar to my collection. Fox has been my main browser since its beta.
True too, 508 is a growing compliance also!
Strict! Appears to be the direction for innovation, I made the switch from Trans after reading a post by Wilderness.
IMO a UA worth using should interpret any of the W3C (not WC3 hehehe) standards correctly without issue. That said, curiosity has got the better of me, today im off to Kinko’s to test my site on various platforms resolutions and browser!
Thanks a bunch
However, it works fine on a lot of browsers.
As I said, I have yet to meet a CMS (other than ones I have written,) pass the validator.
Does building with standards guarantee that pages are rendered correctly for all who visit?
Unfortunately, it doesn't guarantee correct rendering, but it does increase the chances of a given page rendering correctly; if a page is coded in conformance to a declared, formal standard, then browsers are, generally speaking, are less likely to need to resort to their built-in error-correction routines.
What I want to see is a Content Management System (CMS) that turns blue when I validate it.
What about this one [xaraya.com]? It seems to do ok in the validator [validator.w3.org]. Also, Typo3 can easily be configured to produce valid html 4.01 or xhtml 1.0 transitional markup. Sticky me if you want to check out a valid Typo3-based site or two.
-B
What about this one? It seems to do ok in the validator. Also, Typo3 can easily be configured to produce valid html 4.01 or xhtml 1.0 transitional markup. Sticky me if you want to check out a valid Typo3-based site or two.
Great! You know they'll yank the post as soon as they figure out it's a referral, but I've bookmarked it.
Kudos to you. I must have missed that one. I'll certainly keep it in mind for future work.
I must have missed that one.
Whoops. No I didn't. I didn't recognize the page, but I had figured that that was one of the systems that requires an application-level install. I do work for NPOs that rent space on pretty cheap ISP systems (i.e. they won't let us install stuff at this level.) I can't get them to install anything. I couldn't even get them to let me cron a Perl search indexer without jumping through 20 hoops.
But it is kewl.
The more general topic of the thread is "what does WC3 guarantee", and as others have mentioned, "guarantee" is just too big a word. I mean, this is software, right?
Strict! Appears to be the direction for innovation...
For the first time since the beginning of the web, the standards body is leading the way, and their recommendations are ahead of user agent support. This is a whole lot better than the wild, wide open innovation that Netscape and IE engaged in in the 90s.
Browsers are now innovating in the GUI, but supporting standards more and more. And I like it like that. I'm certainly hoping IE is done with developing proprietary mark-up for a while. Last I heard they actually belonged to the W3C - they should learn more about how to play well with others.
(I am taking a self-crash course in phpBB and... well... it is so "table-for-everything"...)
Plone is meant to be good.
Yes, it does seem to be good. However, it is also one of those packages that seems to require SSH/Telnet/Shell access and the ability to install binaries. In my experience, these are very good CMS systems. They tend to be very fast, and very secure.
Our ISP is pretty strict about not allowing us to install these types of things. We don't get any kind of shell access, and that's actually OK, since I am recommending stuff to part-time, inexperienced Webmasters working for NPOs on a pro bono basis. Most of them couldn't handle shell installs anyway.
So far, Xaraya seems to be the only one I have seen that may give us what we need. I did miss it. It was Typo3 that required the shell install. I got confused, and thought that Xaraya was Typo3. I'm a little leery about recommending ADOdb to these chaps, but it isn't really a big deal to install, and the Xaraya site has excellent support and instructions.
the more I look at Xaraya, the more I like it.
It was Typo3 that required the shell install.
Hiya,
Just FYI ( and OT :) ), Typo3 does not require shell access to install. The only real reason for needing shell to install any of the Typo3 packages is so that you're able to create symlinks, and you can get around this by choosing the .zip package (which is built for Windows servers and so does without the symlinks).
-B
Typo3 does not require shell access to install.
Thanks!
In any case, I'll have to try some test installs of these packages, and see if they fit the profile for my readers.
I am so glad to see a real discussion of W3C compliance (do I hear WAI-AAA, anyone?) for PHP CMS systems.
Returning to topic, I believe that WAI compliance is pretty important, as is older browser support, as I have done all my work for NPOs that serve rather disadvantaged users. WAI pretty much requires W3C.
Just FYI. Last night, I went and did a semi-scientific (as opposed to anectdotal) study of the various CMS systems listed in Wikipedia. This was because I need to specify them for other people to use.
It's pretty sad how little attention is paid to W3C and WAI standards, but all the most popular systems failed to make the grade (yet people use them extensively.) The sites we do have to be a bit choosier than most, so that is why I have been so anal about this.
Here is what I came up with:
--
Just as an experiment, I went to the Wikipedia List of Content Management Systems, and followed every link on the page. At the time I did this, there were 81 links to public (open source) CMS sites and 49 links to proprietary CMS sites on the page. Many of these were unsuitable for consideration, because they were either too specialized or required a system configuration that I considered too restrictive (or expensive.) I also eliminated "dud" Wiki entries, which may have robbed me of choices, but I had a LOT of sites to test...
I came up with four (4) that I believe could be usable as our Web site packages. That's four, out of 130 packages.
The testing was pretty basic. I went to each site's home page, and validated. If they failed, then that was that. Game over. If they passed, I brought up a demo of their system. If that passed, I then tested the page with Hermish, and Cynthia Says. If they scored 508 or above, then I kept the URL. I also eliminated expensive commercial ones (but most of them failed anyway.) No commercial offering made the grade. These are all free and/or open source. I only accepted PHP and Perl. This is because of the restrictions many ISPs place on binary, Python, JSP and proprietary systems.
Here are the four that I think are worth considering:
CMSFormE
URL: [cmsforme.sourceforge.net...]
Validation: XHTML 1.0 Transitional, Hermish AAA
System: PHP, Many DB Systems (Abstraction System)
Etomite
URL: [etomite.org...]
Validation: XHTML 1.0 Strict, Hermish AAA
System: PHP, MySQL
WordPress
URL: [wordpress.org...]
Validation: XHTML 1.1, Hermish AA
System: PHP, MySQL
Xaraya
URL: [xaraya.com...]
Validation: XHTML 1.0 Strict, Hermish AA
System: PHP, ADOdb (Many DB Systems)
