Cool=cool
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Promised to help a non-profit out with updates to their website while a new one is in the works. Previously, they were paying a consultant in Virgina to do the updates, and this guy was apparently giving their new designer (working pro bono) a really hard time. (Which is why they were so glad to get me.)
As you may imagine, the site was a nightmare mess of nested tables, divs, etc. My favorite thing I have come across so far is:
<table width="86" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" cool="cool" gridx="5" gridy="5" height="360"
showgridx="showgridx" showgridy="showgridy" usegridx="usegridx" usegridy="usegridy">
I still don't even know what those grid attribute are supposed to do, either.
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<table width="86" border="0" paula="brilliant!"> anybody?
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I totally thought of Paula when I saw that, which is why I thought to post it here.
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<table width="86" bored(er)="shitless ...>
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In Firefox, anyway, this would work with CSS declarations like this:
table[cool=cool] { background-color:##aaaaff; }
And everything is done with XHTML-compliant attribute formats. So, they're trying to overload the attributes for certain tags with semantically-based ones ... it won't work across-browsers, but it should, and if it did it wouldn't be the absolute worst thing I've ever encountered. You could mix and match little pieces of desired behaviour/appearance without having to use multiple class declarations or re-use a bunch of code in your CSS selectors ... it would be kinda nice if this *did* work reliable cross-platform.
The other way it would work is with an XSL transform ... it would be like an in-house XHTML flavour that made it easier to reuse those grid controls and so on (whatever they do).So, well, yeah, it's pretty WTFy, but the idea isn't completely outrageous ....
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After some searching, I discovered that the strange attributes are a feature of Adobe GoLive:
http://www.adobe.com/education/webtech/CS/unit_site_dev2/lg_create.htm
The showgridx="showgridx" syntax is for XHTML compatibility, since it's illegal to have an attribute without a value in XML.
If it's any consolation, I consider the use of GoLive a WTF. Anyway, the use of a tool that hides bad structure explains the mess you've encountered.
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Yes - a colleague suggested that it might have been generated by GoLive - I suspected as much since I couldn't imagine anyone actually writing any of the stuff I saw.
So I guess the use of GoLive is the true WTF.