Windows 7 Taskforce

.Chris wrote on January 16, 2010, 9:27pm

The site is going away soon, and replaced by the same general concept of "heres an idea"

Indrek wrote on January 16, 2010, 9:54pm

I don't think that's quite certain yet. At least the header still says that the change is being considered.

Anyway, most of the errors on the site fall into one of three categories:
1) reusing IDs (for the promote and demote links)
2) not specifying alt text for images
3) not replacing ampersands with the corresponding escape sequence
Plus a typo or two. Hardly anything major, and definitely not worthy of the severity and impact ratings.

But +1 anyway. Remember, every time you use invalid markup, god kills a kitten :P

patternjake wrote on January 16, 2010, 10:15pm

I have to give this one a neutral 0. I am all for web standards and validation, so +1, but it is not always possible for web applications to function properly with standard code (custom code etc) so -1.

eg. look at Google. They try to adhere to web standards but they have many custom developed codes that its just impossible to make the html valid.

nyp wrote on January 17, 2010, 12:07am

Or better yet, convert this site to HTML 5 :D

computerkid wrote on January 17, 2010, 6:26am

Yeah, lol. But, I strongly believe that the taskforce sites will be merged to heresanidea.net and this will become a category on the site.

.Chris wrote on January 17, 2010, 8:57am

to the backend of heres an idea. doesn't mean it will actully move to the site it self

nyp wrote on January 17, 2010, 9:14am

For new sites, like the upcoming Office Taskforce, it's going to be "easy" to migrate to the new codebase.

But I think that the more challenging part is to move the current Windows 7 Taskforce to the new codebase because not only the current data needs to be migrated (the two sites uses a rather different structure) but also the users as well.

Ensign Joe wrote on January 17, 2010, 1:23pm

XHTML sucks. You have do so shitty things like 'disabled="disabled"' instead of just "disabled". And you have to close EVERY tag, shit as <br /> and <img src="xyz" />
That sucks.

Indrek wrote on January 17, 2010, 2:23pm

nyp: so there *is* an Office Taskforce coming up? Any word on the ETA?

WebDevHobo wrote on January 17, 2010, 5:32pm

Wouldn't it be better to make it HTML5?

.Chris wrote on January 17, 2010, 5:47pm

@indek. I know, but I think the chances are pretty good.

Indrek wrote on January 18, 2010, 11:54am

Chris: fingers crossed, eh? ;)

patternjake wrote on January 18, 2010, 10:22pm

Ensign Joe : Just says everything to me that you dont know anything about XHTML.

XHTML is extended HTML, saying that XHTML sucks is saying that HTML sucks.

XHTML applies XML to html, hence why you have to do extra values for each root or string in the xml file.

HTML5 is an extension of XHTML.

Indrek wrote on January 18, 2010, 11:00pm

"XHTML is extended HTML, saying that XHTML sucks is saying that HTML sucks."

Actually, it doesn't. Saying that XHTML sucks is saying that XML added to HTML sucks. Or in other words, the plain-jane HTML is just fine. Not that I agree with it, but that's what I gather from Ensign Joe's post.

veer01_42 wrote on January 19, 2010, 8:22am

There is a guy named Steve Gibson, hes basically the guy who first discovered malware on the internet and coined that term.

If you run that same tool on his site on his site, (www.sgc.com i think it is), his site will fail, and fail horribly at that. The reason, is because every web browser renders web code differently, he had a to use a lot of different tricks to make sure his site is rendered properly on almost all browsers.

The end result is that these tricks don't stick to any one standard and to validation programs like the one ur using, they just look like "bad programming".

Just because a program scans a site and says it not secure or the code is not up to snuff, doesn't always make it true.

Its appreciated that you are showing the concern thou. Hopefully when web standards become truly unified and standardized, we wont have to worry about these things anymore.

Cheers !

Indrek wrote on January 19, 2010, 8:59am

veer01_42: it's good that you understand the various issues that plague web development, namely the cross-browser compatibility problems, but in both cases (this site as well as Gibson's) the errors have nothing to do with browser-specific code, they're simply typos, omissions of required attributes, and so on. There's nothing that could prevent either site from being fixed up in a couple of hours or so, to pass validation with flying colours, yet still work perfectly in all modern browsers.

nyp wrote on January 19, 2010, 12:31pm

@Indrek - ETA: When it's done. :P

formula_86 wrote on February 12, 2010, 4:54pm

When the website is migrated to use the Here's an idea system, will all the existing submissions on this site be still intact?

nyp wrote on February 13, 2010, 6:46am

@formula_86

Migrating to it is going to be a tough task. Converting the submissions and comments are the easy part but the even tougher task is converting the users.

If you have used Here's an idea recently and noticed the user settings, you can see that there are some fields about yourself.

What I'm thinking is that the users table will be similar to what Long did here: you only need to create an account on one taskforce site and you can use it on the other taskforce sites.

But then again, since the new user management system uses RPX and not the legacy system... so maybe the old user system needs to be brought again :p (this is easy anyway since me and Long use SVN)

(Note: By "old taskforce sites", I mean Aero Taskforce, Aqua Taskforce, Windows 7 Taskforce and Windows Live Taskforce. Office Taskforce is not going to be affected since it's a new site anyway...)

Converting to the HAI system itself:
Advantages:
- Comment threading
- Tags
- Gravatars
- Comment reputation
- Timezones (really simple, but this has always been one of my biggest annoyances in websites, yet it's so easy to implement, at least in PHP 5)
Disadvantages: (yes, I'm criticising the very system that I built :p )
- Some usernames that have special characters have to be removed

Conclusion 1:
- The users table will be the same as HAI
- Convert ALL the users to use the new RPX system and provide a conversion system
- Comment reputation and the joined time will /not/ be the same across multiple sites
Advantages:
- User settings won't go out of sync between HAI and old taskforce sites
- No more passwords!
Disadvantages:
- A lot of accounts here are junk therefore bumping up the user IDs and maybe 25% of the accounts will probably never be converted
- Conflicts between HAI and old taskforce sites (what if there's Tim on HAI and there's also another account called Tim on the old taskforce sites?)

Conclusion 2:
- The users table will /not/ be the same as HAI and will be using its own private table
- Use the old user system and require a password on registration
Advantages:
- No conflicts
- All users will work well
Disadvantages:
- A lot of accounts are still junk/spam/troll anyways
- User settings WILL go out of sync between HAI and old taskforce sites
- Too easy to abuse
- Most users are lazy to register especially if it involves a password in the process