Just tried running my home page through the W3C’s HTML validator. Yuk! Not only did it not like my extensions, it found about a zillion other things to complain about as well! Maybe I shouldn’t feel too bad though, as http://www.microsoft.com scores a whopping 114 errors (see this results page) [A lot of people would probably snort loudly and say "I'm not at all surprised!"]
HTML Editor a contender?
Should I be pushing the tool I am using right now as a product for sale I wonder? It’s a little wierd and knocked together, but with some stream-lining and bullet-proofing it could be worth a go. There’s certainly some lo-priced HTML editors around with inferior feature sets. Sure I can’t compete with a major package like DreamWeaver, but I’d be pushing the simple and budget conscious angle. Most people are still pretty intimidated by the idea of putting together a web site, so a very simple editor might be worth doing.
HTML based word processing
I still like the idea of using HTML as a generic document format (eg instead of Word’s DOC format), for a few reasons:
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It’s an open standard, and everyone can use it
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It’s human readable, so that even if the document loses its header you can still go in and retrieve useful text
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It doesn’t need to be converted to be put online.
One of the problems with HTML as a standard document format is the problem of storing images. HTML links to images as separate files, whereas if you want to email someone a document to read it would be best of those images were "embedded" in the file. There are 2 current ways I know of to handle this:
- MHT files – this is a format that was born of email… when you get formatted email, both the HTML code for the page as well as any images that are on it are included as "attachments" in the email. MHT is stored just like an HTML formatted email only the from line has a rather unusual sender, such as "From: <Saved by Microsoft Internet Explorer 5>"
- CHM files – this is Compiled HTML Help format, used by Microsoft for help documents since Windows 95. In my opinion this is a surprisingly under-exploited format, since it can store an entire navigable website in a single file, with excellent compression as well.
Currently HTML Editor can create CHM files, with the help of free downloadable software from Microsoft. This entire web site (11.8 MB including all downloadable files) can be easily stored as a single 5.2 MB CHM file, browseable on any Windows98+ machine. It is likely that MHT will be supported in the future for single pages, although unfortunately it doesn’t support compression (in fact the final MHT is usually bigger than the files it comprises)
Oh yes, the bad thing about both those formats is that I don’t think either of them is readable in a non-windows environment, which is a shame.