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September 22, 2005
Slashdot CSS
Slashdot CSS: Popular commentary site changes its display system: "After 8 years of my nasty, crufty, hodge podged together HTML, last night we finally switched over to clean HTML 4.01 with a full complement of CSS." Amazing stat: the site has 900,000 users (I'm assuming these are registered users, not visitors)... 60,000 articles already... 13 million comments (no wonder I couldn't read them all! ;-) Graphics are still in proprietary, patent-ridden GIF instead of the W3C's first Recommendation, though. ;-) The site itself has a SourceForge project page, where problems and requests can be tracked... see example of workflow... I'm interested in any comments from those who have worked on the back end of a system like this, trying to refine input for changes, thanks in advance.
Posted by John Dowdell at September 22, 2005 12:56 PM
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Well so long IE 6 is still around (and it will be a lot of years still) Its hard to replace pngs with gifts, The w3c say lots of stuff but they need get in there head they are only part suported by the browers in use today, and look like IE7 not will be complete work with some of there "Recommendation".
And please remember they are using gifts them self on there webpages!! Of course they have some weak story for it.
But freaks and normal people try set a standard, Its what works for the web designer today what works.
Till the day there is no brower left that still not work with standards!!
Posted by: Jack at September 22, 2005 01:20 PM
I bet their page bandwidth overhead lightened up drastically since the migration. :)
Posted by: Chris Charlton at September 22, 2005 01:40 PM
Patent ridden? Hasn't it been expired for a couple of years now? June 2003 in the US and may/june 2004 for EU and JP from what I recall.
Posted by: Danilo at September 22, 2005 03:43 PM
Yup, the Unisys patent on GIF expired two years back, but it has a history of being patent-encumbered..... ;-)
(I was on the CompuServe Graphics Forums when the patent was first revealed, and when developers spontaneously banded together to produce PNG. Particularly as PNG was also the first Recommendation of the W3C, it still seems ironic when this "web standard" is not used.)
For IE6, it displays PNGs fine... just doesn't do them with 8-bit alpha transparency, from what I recall.
Posted by: John Dowdell at September 22, 2005 04:22 PM
Not supporting one of the main benefits of an image type is not quite the same supporting an image type fine IMO, but too each his own. I'm sure that I've read about a hck that can bring transparency support to IE using HTC files, so yoy may be able to use them anyway.
But back to the point of the story, I've not seen anywhere that says what they've gained from the switch over (if anyone has a link, post away). As Chris mentions above, I wonder if they are actually saving on bandwidth, or if it's just a process improvement they are looking for.
Posted by: Danilo at September 23, 2005 08:02 AM