[vox-tech] Web XML bizarreness (Was on vox, Re: [OT] SACDEV location and schedule set)

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 01:37:29AM -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 01:27:06AM -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> > 
> > Their site has details, at their new domain name:  http://www.sacdev.org/
> 

<snipped>

> 
> Checking out the HTML source, I see this (made to look nice in email):

<snipped for brevity>

> Whatintheheck!?  I guess maybe I'm getting rusty, but is this some XML
> magic that Firebird knows how to deal with, but Konq (and other browsers,
> I presume) would just skip?
> 
> 
> (Waiting for Micah to speak up, as usual ;^) )

I'm flattered! :-)

I have never seen anything remotely like this. One thing's for damn
sure: it's not conforming to any W3C spec.

On closer inspection, the document loads a JS file
/controls/SolpartMenu/spmenu.js, which apparently fines your span tag
and converts it into an appropriate table. Says "Solution Partner's
ASP .NET Hierarchical Menu Control" at the top of that file. Damn
ugliest hack I ever heard of. They should at least have changed the
HTML DTD they're using, which says it's W3C HTML 4.0 Transitional
(like hell it is).

But at least we can see now that it's not some "magic" HTML that only
Mozilla/Firebird or MSIE know about; it merely requires JS. Go bug 'em
about that (not that I expect them to fix it, but they should at least
include a small duplicate list of the same links at the bottom of the
page, so you can at least get to where you need to go.

Completely inaccessible to browsers w/o JS, eh? (except the first page).

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
micah@cowan.name