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Guest FirefoxRocks

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Guest FirefoxRocks

I would like some feedback on both http://portal.trap17.com/xkingdom/ and http://portal.trap17.com/xkingdom/.Oh and if you know how to, could you please check the MIME type of the document in Opera, Firefox/Netscape and Internet Explorer? :)I need to know what I can improve (colours, navigation, etc) and what is good about the site.Thanks,FirefoxRocks

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Umm... the two links are exactly the same :)It looks alright, but I would have centered it on the page instead of having it to the left. Also, the text on the buttons at the top is a bit low in contrast to the background, and I would have used relative positioning to shift the images on the buttons at the bottom to the middle of the line. Otherwise, good job :)

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You're using invalid XHTML 1.1. You're serving it as text/html which is not allowed in XHTML 1.1 (xhtml 1.1 is NOT backwards compatible with HTML).You're also doing content negotiation, which is pointless and not allowed in XHTML 1.1. Why? It deprecates the lang attribute, and is not HTML compatible, and as such must not be served with text/html.There is currently no point in content negotiation, other than to impress other computer geeks with your knowledge. If the content can be transformed into HTML it doesn't require any XML features. You might as well use HTML 4.01 or serve XHTML (1.0) as text/html to all user agents.It is especially useless to do content type negotiation, i.e., sending the same content to everyone, but sending different Content-Type headers to different browsers.

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Guest FirefoxRocks
You're using invalid XHTML 1.1. You're serving it as text/html which is not allowed in XHTML 1.1 (xhtml 1.1 is NOT backwards compatible with HTML).You're also doing content negotiation, which is pointless and not allowed in XHTML 1.1. Why? It deprecates the lang attribute, and is not HTML compatible, and as such must not be served with text/html.There is currently no point in content negotiation, other than to impress other computer geeks with your knowledge. If the content can be transformed into HTML it doesn't require any XML features. You might as well use HTML 4.01 or serve XHTML (1.0) as text/html to all user agents.It is especially useless to do content type negotiation, i.e., sending the same content to everyone, but sending different Content-Type headers to different browsers.
I'm serving XHTML 1.1 as application/xhtml+xml and XHTML 1.0 as text/html. I don't see a problem with that. If it is XHTML 1.1, then I use xml:lang. If it is XHTML 1.0, I use both xml:lang and lang. There is a point to do content negotiation because Internet Explorer can't handle application/xhtml+xml, so therefore I can't just serve it is application/xhtml+xml to everything.
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Guest FirefoxRocks

The point of doing this (content-type negotiation) over just using XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4.01 is that I get draconian error handling.If I just serve as it as XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4.01 as text/html, then I won't be able to get draconian error handling. The document will continue to load even if I have made an error in document (making it ill-formed). With draconian error handling, the browser generates a fatal error when encountering an ill-formed document.

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Guest FirefoxRocks
Why is this a good thing?
Because I am too lazy to validate every one of pages for well-formedness. With this, the browser generates an error on ill-formed documents, and I know where I can fix it. Otherwise I would have to dig through quite a bit to find my mistake.
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Guest FirefoxRocks

I have the web developer toolbar for Firefox, Flock and Netscape. I can just press CTRL+SHIFT+H to validate a page and then press CTRL+W to close the tab when I'm done.And my pages are trying to meet accessibility standards. I try hard to make them compatible with screen reader software and for blind/deaf people.I need another person's opinion on this.

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Unlike croationkid, I could care less about what variation/version of what language you use, so long as it is valid and it works.It looks okay as is, meaning nothing really irks me. No crazy color scheme and no jarring text. It's clean and presentable, which is sometimes half of what you need to be when creating a site. I don't see you misusing special entities like ', ", >, < or &, so kudos for that. I see it often in even professional sites. The readability is good as well.I think mostly you have some design details to work out, if you must take away anything from my criticism. Visually, it's unappealing. White main body on white background? That doesn't vibe real well nowadays, unless you've got something like a mock Vista-Aero approach, but even then, you've got to colorize something. The pages feel kinda parched, like they drank some bleach. Images would be a wonderful addition.Less minor things, the Login and Register links might as well be invisible. If my monitor were not so great, the two might as well be one with their background. The top section is organized, but crowded, and again, not very interesting to behold. Lastly, this is just a pet peeve. Sure it's valid and perfectly legal to do it, but I would argue that you shouldn't use a table to form things that are not tabular data. That's why we have CSS, so a table shouldn't really be used to format how your page looks. I would argue it would look better if you didn't use a table; you have more flexibility and it can be done just as easily, with less code in fact. Essentially, you'd just modify a class derived from the <p> or <img> tag and boom, same effects done.Final note, center it too. Right justified things are good for segments, but not whole pages.

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Guest FirefoxRocks
Unlike croationkid, I could care less about what variation/version of what language you use, so long as it is valid and it works.
:)
It looks okay as is, meaning nothing really irks me. No crazy color scheme and no jarring text. It's clean and presentable, which is sometimes half of what you need to be when creating a site. I don't see you misusing special entities like ', ", >, < or &, so kudos for that. I see it often in even professional sites. The readability is good as well.
That's great. I aim for high readability so that visually-impaired users can read the site as easy as possible.
I think mostly you have some design details to work out, if you must take away anything from my criticism. Visually, it's unappealing. White main body on white background? That doesn't vibe real well nowadays, unless you've got something like a mock Vista-Aero approach, but even then, you've got to colorize something. The pages feel kinda parched, like they drank some bleach. Images would be a wonderful addition.
So what colour do you suggest I make the main body?
Less minor things, the Login and Register links might as well be invisible. If my monitor were not so great, the two might as well be one with their background. The top section is organized, but crowded, and again, not very interesting to behold. Lastly, this is just a pet peeve. Sure it's valid and perfectly legal to do it, but I would argue that you shouldn't use a table to form things that are not tabular data. That's why we have CSS, so a table shouldn't really be used to format how your page looks. I would argue it would look better if you didn't use a table; you have more flexibility and it can be done just as easily, with less code in fact. Essentially, you'd just modify a class derived from the <p> or <img> tag and boom, same effects done.
I just noticed that the links were unreadable. I'll fix that as soon as possible. It is hard to form more than 3 columns in a layout with CSS, that's why I still stuck with tables there.
Final note, center it too. Right justified things are good for segments, but not whole pages.
Centering the page works in Firefox, Netscape, SeaMonkey, Safari, Opera and more compliant browsers, but I can't seem to center it in Internet Explorer.
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I say stick to HTML 4. There's not really any point to writing XHTML documents, there aren't any benefits over HTML. Yeah, sure, it's a valid XML document - but so what? What shortcoming of HTML is addressed by turning the document into XML, and how does that solve a problem? There are plenty of arguments against using XHTML, but really the only arguments against those are that 1) he should have used content negotiation, which is stupid in the first place, and 2) he should have used an XHTML-compliant CMS, but those don't happen to exist at this point in time. The point I'm trying to make is that there simply are no real, compelling reasons to use XHTML over HTML. If you disagree, give your reasons.

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Guest FirefoxRocks

You see, I can't argue with the fact that XHTML 1.0 is better than HTML 4.01 because well, it isn't.Both HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 is fine to use, the essential differences between them are self-closing elements and the DOCTYPE. (is that right?)The only reason I use XHTML is to feel better about the site. :)

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There are fundamental differences in javascript between HTML and XHTML (you must use createelement's namespace aware variant, createelementNS() (which until recently was only followed by Safari, other "xhtml compliant browsers" would actually put createelements in the xhtml namespace), document.write doesn't work...) into and some minor differences in CSS.I really disagree that XHTML isn't better than HTML. It is better. There's just not enough support for it (none in IE) at the moment.

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I have never used document.write() outside from the instructions I received in class nearly 2 years ago, and personally, I don't find it terribly useful either. I just use an existing element and use innerHTML to render what I want, plus it's exceedingly more dynamic. So if XHTML won't properly use this JS function, I wouldn't hold it against it. But that's just me.As for which is better, HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0, I don't see a viable reason as to why anyone, regardless the positioning of their side, would argue that their stance is definitive. Better-ness is ultimately subjective, not a basis of real fact. If you think Vista is the best, I can guarantee you'll find an advocate out their who's penchant is all things DOS. Personally, I use XHTML because it's one of the latest standards in well formed documents, and it's what I learned. I'm not going to deviate from what I learned 4 years ago. Digressing, it's nothing short of trite bickering when you start touting superiorities over what verily may be but nuances and opinions.

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