Boards in valid, no-tables XHTML?

JustHalf

I had an idea for a project which would vastly increase the customisabilty (and possibly accessability) of boards.ie .

It should be possible to have a set of VBulletin templates which generate valid, no-tables* XHTML. New styles could be written by simply adding in a new CSS file. It shouldn't be too hard to have a simple Perl script that takes in a user id and hammers out the user's stylesheet.

Users could potentially have their own stylesheet in their preferences, where they could do things like:

#DropdownMenu {
display: none;
}

if they thought it was gammy.

Any thoughts on this? Anyone willing to help make a proof-of-concept?

* Tables might be a good idea for the forum view, as it is actually A TABLE.

Kai

Sounds like a good idea to me, a lot of sites have done something similar.
At the moment im only learning css myself so this is a bit beyond me to be of much help but id like to be involved if at all possible.

/Edit
This is one of the articles i saw on this tyoe of thing
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/style/sheets/layout/advanced/

Webmonkey

I really need to start focusing more on using CSS

dahamsta

JustHalf, the next version of vBulletin is supposed to be fully XHTML and CSS compliant and dispenses with a lot of the crufty HTML scattered around the vB2 layouts. With that in mind, it's probably a good idea to hold off until it's released before doing a proof of concept.

adam

DeVore

JustHalf, I'm totally in favour of this. As DH says I understand VB3 has a lot of stuff to support this in there. We are *all* waiting for Godot because once it settles down to some sort of stability, we may even break code-bases away from them and do our own thing (as it is we are pushing VB to do things it was never intended to... and I have a lot of ideas I want to do to take that several steps further).

So, in recap, yeah I'm totally with you regarding making this as interface agnostic as possible but we can do ourselves a favour and see what Santa brings us in VB3.

DeV.

dahamsta

God only knows when they'll release it. It seems to be going on forever...

adam

Pablo

they gave everyone 3 months extra on their licences. But yeah waiting for vb3 is annoying alright.

p

Yep, it's in VB3. It'll open up so many options you can't even believe.

phpBB uses XHTML at present as far as I know, i'm not sure how 'clean' their code is.

It'll offer some great options, one big one will be the bank balance ( if that's an issue)

http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/espn-interview/01/

The Savings Add Up
Page reduction (est.): 50KB
Page views/day: 40,000,000
Projected bandwidth savings:
2 terabytes/day
61 terabytes/month
730 terabytes/year

- Kevin, awaiting the day.

JustHalf

Originally posted by p
phpBB uses XHTML at present as far as I know, i'm not sure how 'clean' their code is.

It's HTML 4.01 and table-based layout from the looks of things (that's what there own forum is running, their site is down at the moment I'm afraid).