Klarinet Archive - Posting 000059.txt from 2002/10

From: Mark Gresham <mgresham@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Centaur Records Website (technical stuff)
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 20:44:22 -0400

This answer is not exactly "clarinet" in topic, but maybe useful to
those with technical needs... Hope you don't mind.

Kennen White wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> Audrey had trouble reaching Centaur Records' website
> http://centaurrecords.com/
>
> Apparently, it doesn't work with older browsers. I have no idea why. It
> should be fine with Internet Explorer 5 or a recent version of Netscape
> Navigator. My wife couldn't access the site with Netscape 4.? on our iMac,
> but had no trouble when she downloaded a newer version.
>
> Kennen White

The URL above is a frameset, pointing to three ASP (active server page)
files that have spaces in the file names. Each returns an error message
of "The parameter is incorrect." (three in all) to the screen instead of
displaying the page.
It appears there is an extra " near the end of one of the tags which
calls a frame, but trying to call the frame alone as a URL also returns
a single error message of the kind described above in Netscape 4x.
Often when websites are "sloppy code," it's the newer browsers that
are more "rigorous" about interpreting the code. But some changes have
taken place in terms of coding styles and standards over the years.
Here is a good website you can use to "validate" your own coding style,
a nice tool to help bring pages in conformance with WC3 and other
current standards:
http://validator.w3.org/
It didn't like the "centaurrecords.com" site, returning these general
warnings when testing the frameset and each of the frames:

"
Warning: No Character Encoding detected! To assure correct validation,
processing, and display, it is important that the character encoding is
properly labeled. Further explanations.

Below are the results of attempting to parse this document with an SGML
parser.

Fatal Error: no document type declaration; will parse without
validation

I could not parse this document, because it uses a public
identifier that is not in my catalog.
"

It should be able to properly validate HTML code as generated by the ASP
scripting.
I've begun to use this tool some to test pages I've made (for a
client; I have yet to use it on my own website). It's a tough critic,
but following its "advice" some browser-to-browser bugaboos in some
pages with "old script" have apparantly been eliminated in my client's
site. Sure beat trying to update things just by looking at the old
code! Took a lot of time, but saved a lot more.
Frankly, I avoid use of ASP since VBScript is so much a security risk
and many viruses have been written in that language. I've had to remove
infections from one of my clients' web pages -- viruses that have
attached themselves to the end of the web page's code as a means of
self-propagation.

--Mark Gresham
mgresham@-----.com
Lux Nova Press
http://www.luxnova.com/

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