[SGVLUG] Website Testing

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Dustin
> 
> On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, David Lawyer wrote:
> 
> > The html code for the existing website sgvlug.net looks far 
> too complex
> > with all kinds of table and list tags.

You should have seen it BEFORE I started with it -- Basically, Charlie was doing, as they say, "a yoeman's job" of maintaining it in the state it was in.  Some of it may have been "lost in the translation" (we were working with things like google's "cached" version of the page to start with, I think) and other bits were fall-out from doing it a little more consistently (I found mis-matched tags in the original, however that didn't stop the page from rendering...)

However, "out of the blue", I found sgvlug.org mentioned in an e-mail captured in this archive:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/httpd-docs/200104.mbox/%3C3AE64DD9.6EAB8DAF@earthlink.net%3E

In particular, the comment is "[example websites]... sgvlug.org -- is kinda boring"

ouch -- we're "boring" -- no wonder attendance is down ;)

> This is one reason I don't much like html editors.  While
> machine-generated code is a tough problem in general, I've 
> always had the
> private conviction that it wouldn't be that hard to generate much more
> readable code.

That's one of the secrets -- you need to consider an HTML page to be "code", and apply stylistic techniques for "maintaining readable code": indendation, comments, and even fully blank lines where appropriate.

> Note that I'm *NOT* advocating maintaining the site in nvu.  I merely 
> point out that if static pages are more important than 
> anything else, that 
> is probably the only alternative to
> 
> > editor (=vi) of course.  At least 2 people would need ftp (or ssh)
> > access to maintain the webpage.

The problem with using "just a plain text editor" is that once you get to "more than one person doing the work" [or even "one person using more than one computer"], you need to invest in a revision-control mechanism of some sort anyway -- otherwise you'll get changes overwritten by "the other guy with the older version of the page..."  

> This is exactly why I am opposed to maintaining raw html, 
> whether with vi
> or a fancier editor.  I think ease of delegation is worth dynamic
> generation

As such, the "editing" that I've been doing (and I presume Michael does this as well) has been ON the target system via vi -- while this reduces the likelyhood of an overwrite, it also means I've been editing the web page in real time.  OTOH, we're now running into permission problems if either of us forgets to make a page "writable" by the other.  [though this can lead to security problems if that's the same "group" as the web service itself...]