Re: The state of our web site and standards

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 07:26:52AM -0500 or thereabouts, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>   Okay, this is yet another rant from the standard checking department,
> and this time there is no binary compatibility issue I assume. Of course
> like all good rants there is at least a couple of practical suggestion so
> don't trash this mail right now.
> 
>   Basically our web site is looking like a assertion that the Gnome
> project don't care about standards compliance. Let's take our main
> web page and try to check it's conformance:

It used to validate before the redesign. I used to be in awe of the
fact that I could use a website devoted to a graphical environment
in Lynx. It was one of the things that make me think that GNOME would
be a good thing. 

>   What can be done:

I would add that new designs should be tested against the Bobby tool
(http://www.cast.org/bobby only it's down right now) which checks for
accessibility across browsers. Given the existence of the GNOME
Accessibility Project, we will look extremely stupid if we don't
do something like that. 

>    - try to automate fixing, there is at least one tool I know available
>      in source for doing this, its Tidy:
>      http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

This program -rocks-. Everyone should send Mark Raggett a postcard!
I learned several attributes by going through the results of it :) 

I agree that I feel embarrassed by a website that doesn't validate
when GNOME is trying to advocate or promote standards in other areas.
I have brought this up countless times on IRC and elsewhere.

So why am I not part of the solution? Because I don't understand
the CVS module that produces the website at all, and gnome-web-list
was, last I looked, still discussing python/php/perl.

Telsa

PS I am sure someone will now find an error and prove me wrong, but
in general, my web pages do validate and pass bobby.