Planetarion Forums

meglamaniac · 3 May 2003, 17:27

Ok, I've finished the coding of the replacement for the "Links, Links, Links!" thread.
You can find it (and play with it) here.

Please note:
1) The submission form will be offline until I have completed 2)
2) I have started the horrible task of transfering all the links from the thread into the database. However, it's bloody boring and so far I've only got down to the top of the "delphi" section of the revised list (the post about halfway down the links thread). It's made even longer by the fact that I'm checking all the links still work.
3) Thanks to pab for comming up with a list of categories - I've slimmed it down considerably because the system allows not only multiple field selection/sorting but full text searching as well, so the categories are now very general and serve to group things into a broad area for further searching.

Treat it nicely fs!

SYMM · 7 May 2003, 12:15

Very pretty, just one thing seems a bit borked. If you click "Administration", it (rightly) shows the browser user/pass prompt- i click cancel, but am then unable to navigate anywhere else, as the other links then also bring up the user/pass prompt.

Structural Integrity · 7 May 2003, 12:32

it looks pretty... How did you load all those links in the DB? Did you enter them manually?
I also want to take over all those links for my own site. I just can't be arsed to enter them all.

meglamaniac · 7 May 2003, 13:14

No you're not meant to be able to access Administration, that link is just there for my own convenience. Good point about the 401 page though - I'm fixing it now.

The links I'm doing manually (snore) so I'll do another 50 odd tonight. S/I when I'm finished if you like I can provide the database in SQL form.
The table is in the format:
ID (primary key, int(10)), timestamp (int(10)), name (text), url(text), description (text), category (text), moderate (tinyint(3)).

The moderate field I use simply to determine whether to display items in the listing or not, as I have a moderation system going on for the public submision form.

[edit]
Fixed

wu_trax · 10 May 2003, 20:29

i was a bit bored this evening so i generated an xml-file out of BuddhistPunks post in the other thread, so if you give me your db-table-structure and table-name i can easiely generate the insert statments for you

Gayle29uk · 10 May 2003, 20:54

The W3C link says it's not valid HTML, I'm buggered if I can see why though.

Very nicely done though

pablissimo · 10 May 2003, 21:19

Because he hasn't double-quoted his href's.

meglamaniac · 10 May 2003, 22:45

It was last time I checked it...

/me buggers off to look

meglamaniac · 10 May 2003, 22:46

ah - yep, i modified the navbar include and forgot the quotes.

fixed.

MT · 15 May 2003, 02:05

It might be valid but it looks **** in gecko

BesigedB · 28 May 2003, 13:00

thats geckos problem then..?

ps: can we also have uk computer online shops in it this time round.

meglamaniac · 28 May 2003, 14:13

I'll see what I can do - sorry it's not been updated as promised; I let it slip before the exams and I'm kinda busy now (especially as for the one tomorrow, myself and two mates on the course have been to about 5 lectures total).

hey ho...

Vanilla · 28 May 2003, 18:44

oh i see liek that is it I wont be forced out u havnt hrd the last of me! i'd have gotten away with it if it werent for u meddling kids.

what

looks good

meglamaniac · 28 May 2003, 23:21

You've been on the Pro-Plus again havn't you?

Sokar · 1 Jun 2003, 08:55

Did you ever see what it looks like in mozilla? Looks to me like you only made it IE compatible :\

pablissimo · 1 Jun 2003, 11:14

Take a screenie of it in Moz then.

The only thing that could be ****ing things about is the CSS has minor errors in it, no inclusion of generic font families for a start.

What kind of crap's going on if Moz can't display an HTML4 and CSS2 valid page?

meglamaniac · 1 Jun 2003, 12:22

Sokar, it conforms to HTML 4.01 Trans and CSS.
If your browser can't display it properly, then it isn't rendering to the standard properly - I'm not about to start putting non-standard code in after all the effort I went to making sure it DID conform to the standard.

I asked people to test it for me in Netscape and in Mozilla to see how it worked in the other 2 major browsers and go the OK. I've tested it myself in Mozilla in the uni labs (on RedHat 8) and it works fine.

There's nothing more I can do.

SYMM · 1 Jun 2003, 12:28

It works ok in Opera, it looks verystrange as it is loading - "tabulation" things all over the place, but once it finishes its fine

Sokar · 1 Jun 2003, 12:38

http://dustdance.org/images/megla.png

mozilla 1.3, windoze.

meglamaniac · 1 Jun 2003, 12:46

Looks like it isn't dealing with <td colspan=blah> properly.
1.3.1 is out as is 1.4 RC1 - all I can suggest is trying it in one of them.

Sokar · 1 Jun 2003, 12:58

Looks the same in 1.3.1 and don't really want to install a rc-1 version.

meglamaniac · 1 Jun 2003, 13:08

can you give me the build identifier for your copy of Mozilla (preferably the 1.3.1 install)?
It's in Help -> About Mozilla and probably begins "Mozilla/5.0..."
Also, is it just that page that shows wrong, or all of them (the home page etc)?

Thanks.

Sokar · 1 Jun 2003, 14:05

Mozilla 1.3.1

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3.1) Gecko/20030425

It's basically looking like that on all the pages.

meglamaniac · 1 Jun 2003, 14:19

Well, I've submitted a bug report on the site, but I'm expecting a response along the lines of "fixed for 1.4".
We shall see...

meglamaniac · 1 Jun 2003, 16:20

Ok, different response from expected.

The good news is that it's a recognised problem to do with me using "pseudo-columns" (ie. some columns which are spanned by others, in particular in combination with some specific width assignments). The problem is that space is not allocated for pseudo-columns, thus nicely screwing up the layout.
This is along the lines I was guessing at earlier.

The bad news is that the html spec doesn't really cover this situation, leaving it up to the developers to decide what to do about it.
Unfortunately the Mozilla team, in contradiction to how just about every other major browser works, sees the way they render it as "correct" behaviour - ie. space will not be allocated for a column that, technically, isn't drawn (even though it's vital for the layout).

I'm waiting for a response on what they plan to do in version 1.4 before I consider what to do about this. Judging from the number of similar reports I've been directed to, there are plenty more users who're frustrated by this so-called "correct" rendering pattern, so they may yet alter it.

Golin · 1 Jun 2003, 16:37

megla is teh good

queball · 1 Jun 2003, 17:09

Quote:

Originally posted by meglamaniac
I'm waiting for a response on what they plan to do in version 1.4 before I consider what to do about this. Judging from the number of similar reports I've been directed to, there are plenty more users who're frustrated by this so-called "correct" rendering pattern, so they may yet alter it.

Why wait for 1.4? Most people use 1.0, I think. You can force a table cell to exist with an &nbsp; or a Unicode zero-width space &#8203;.

ObStyleNazi: Using tables for this kind of layout is horrible when <div>s and styles and borders and so forth could do at least some of the jobs. And you probably shouldn't use alt="tabulation", etc - ok, alternate text is required by the validator, but someone using a textmode browser will actually see it.

lynx -dump http://www.megla.net/techdbhome.php:

Code:

   Logo

   Sunday 01 June 2003
   Site design ©2003 M.Dale

    Site Navigation:   [1]Home :: techDB Main

   trans
       tabulation               tabulation
                  At megla.net:
    >
    >
    >
    >
   [2]Home
   [3]techDB
   [4]Contact
   [5]Administration
       tabulation               tabulation
       tabulation                      tabulation
                  Hosted by megla.net:
    >
    >
   [6]As Shadows Fade - A local Nottingham band's website
   [7]Dead Cell - A Papa Roach fansite
       tabulation                      tabulation
   [8]Valid HTML 4.01! [9]Valid CSS! trans
   techDB
         techDB: PC technical resources database
   Welcome to techDB!
   techDB has been designed to take over the job of a certain thread on
   the Planetarion forums (thread located [10]here) which contains a list
...........

meglamaniac · 1 Jun 2003, 17:13

would alt="" be considered valid?

I'll have a play with the unicode zero width thing after exams (tried spaces, that ****ed up the layout in other ways).

BesigedB · 2 Jun 2003, 14:12

Quote:

Originally posted by meglamaniac
Looks like it isn't dealing with <td colspan=blah> properly.
1.3.1 is out as is 1.4 RC1 - all I can suggest is trying it in one of them.

1.4RC1 is still displaying your site like pants

meglamaniac · 2 Jun 2003, 14:22

I know, I ended up trying it myself.
It's really odd behaviour - I can see no valid reason to NOT allocate space just because they're not drawn.

Grrr.

BesigedB · 2 Jun 2003, 16:22

i saved the page, removed the standards declaration so moz ran in 'quirks mode' and loaded the page. still borked.

queball · 2 Jun 2003, 17:38

What's it supposed to look like?

queball · 2 Jun 2003, 18:45

Hey megla, I w3'ed your page:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<title>megla.net mockup</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

<link rel="stylesheet"  type="text/css"
 href="http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/home.css">

<h1 id="logo"><img src="techdbhome.php_files/logo.jpg" alt="megla.net"
width="800" height="128"></h1>

<div class="banner"><a class="bannerLink" href="/">Home</a> | techDB Main</div>

<div class="navBlock">

<h2 class="navhead">At megla.net:</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.megla.net/" class="navlink">Home</a>
<li><a href="http://www.megla.net/techdbhome.php" class="navlink">techDB</a>
<li><a href="http://www.megla.net/mail.php" class="navlink">Contact</a>
<li><a href="http://www.megla.net/admin/" class="navlink">Administration</a>
</ul>

<h2 class="navhead">Hosted by megla.net:</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.megla.net/shadowsfade/" target="_blank"
class="navlink">As Shadows Fade</a> - A local Nottingham band's
website
<li><a href="http://www.megla.net/deadcell/" target="_blank"
class="navlink">Dead Cell</a> - A Papa Roach fansite</ul>

<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer"><img border="0"
src="techdbhome.php_files/valid-html401.gif" alt="Valid HTML 4.01!"
height="31" width="88"></a>
<a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/"><img style="border: 0pt
none ; width: 88px; height: 31px;" src="techdbhome.php_files/vcss.gif"
alt="Valid CSS!"></a>

</div>

<div class="newsBlock">
<h2 class="newsHeading">techDB</h2>

<div class="item">
<h3 class="headline">techDB: PC technical resources database</h3>

<p>Welcome to techDB!

<p>techDB has been designed to take over the job of a <a
href="http://pirate.planetarion.com/">certain thread</a> on the
Planetarion forums which contains a list of resources useful to the
users of the Programming and Discussion, and Hardware and Tech Support
forums.  The list has grown to be very large and has proven time
consuming and tedious to maintain. It has also become increasingly
difficult to use the list as searching it involves simply reading many
hundreds of links.

<p>The aim of this system is to provide an way to access and
administer the same information, which is open to everyone - both to
view and to contribute to.  Anyone can submit a resource link, and see
it in the database as soon as it has been checked for validity by
yours truely.

<p>This should hopefully be within 24 hours.

<h3 class="headline">Make your choice:</h3>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.megla.net/techdbsearch.php">Search the database</a>
<li><a href="http://www.megla.net/techdbsub.php">Submit an entry</a>
<li><a href="http://www.megla.net/techdbreport.php">Report duplicate
entries, dead links, or any other problems</a></ul>

<h3 class="headline">Terms Of Use:</h3>

<p>All I ask is that you use the system
responsibly. A system like this will hopefully be of a lot more use to
everyone, so don't abuse it.

<p>One thing to note, as it's bound to
happen sooner or later, is that submitting
fake/dumb/insulting/whatever resources will simply be a waste of time
as:

<ol>
<li>They will never be shown in the database as they won't get past
validation
<li>The validation system allows me to delete submissions in bulk,
hundreds at a time if necessary</ol>

<p>Thanks,<br>Matt.
</div>
</div>

<div class="navBlock"><h2 class="navhead">Space-filling block!</h2></div>

<hr class="hide">

<p class="small">Monday 02 June 2003
<p class="copyright">Site design ©2003 M.Dale
<p class="small">CSS support and a resolution of 800x600 or above recommended.
<p class="small">Site design, layout and content by M.Dale unless otherwise
specified. All rights reserved.

meglamaniac · 2 Jun 2003, 20:26

Quote:

Originally posted by queball
What's it supposed to look like?

http://www.megla.net/render.jpg

Nodrog · 4 Jun 2003, 01:44

Quote:

Originally posted by queball
ObStyleNazi: Using tables for this kind of layout is horrible when <div>s and styles and borders and so forth could do at least some of the jobs. And you probably shouldn't use alt="tabulation", etc - ok, alternate text is required by the validator, but someone using a textmode browser will actually see it.

quoted for agreement