Cool=cool



  • 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. 

     



  • <table width="86" border="0" paula="brilliant!"> anybody?



  • I totally thought of Paula when I saw that, which is why I thought to post it here.



  • <table width="86" bored(er)="shitless ...>



  • 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 ....



  • 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.



  • 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.


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