I have used Snitz for a few years on some of my sites as forums, but recently, through the MODS, I have begun using the full capabilities of Snitz as a complete portal system (for example, see my signature).
For my next project I will be attempting to change the formatting in the Snitz code to validate as XHTML Transitional.
I have examined the normal Snitz 3.4.03 code, the Snitz CSS (by r7 et al) mod and recently I have been playing with Snitz Speedball (formerly LB). For my project, the advantage of Speedball over the Snitz CSS is its' simplicity – it has one static stylesheet.
Of course working with static stylesheets will not be appropriate for every user but it has the advantage of being half way to XHTML compatibility already.
So far the unwritten 'Golden Rule' of designing stylesheets for Snitz has been to keep the design unaffected, however I will not be so concerned if the final design is slightly different - in fact it may need to be different.
I plan to touch the serious stuff (VB and Javascript) as little as possible but to just tweak the HTML. I will begin at the beginning with basic files such inc-header.asp and topic.asp. I will also be looking at the Content Mod.
If anyone else is interested in converting some of the formatting in Snitz Speedball files to XHTML then let me know and we can compare notes etc.
Of course, that is why I'm settling for an 'indirect' one! I am not expecting all the pages to meet all the most stringent tests of validators such as w3 and Bobby. Also I am not expecting any pages that give the user the option of Forum code to validate.
What I'm trying to do is have simple includes such as inc_header etc to validate so they can be included into pages outside the forum that do validate. The forum pages etc can get close-ish but I agree that we won't get them to validate 100%.
I would be interested in your experience in building Speedball. What other obstacles are there towards XHTML? If we could make a problem list then that would be a step forward.
Because Speedball gives table borders from CSS rather than from tables within tables, it is a big step forward already. XHTML 1.0 Transitional is much more lax than 1.0 Strict or 1.1 and is not an unrealistic aim.
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Posted - 02 December 2003 : 07:33:12
