Most horrible HTML ever

Post #259,455 by drewk 6/20/06 10:37:50 AM Reply	Most horrible HTML ever <P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><B \nstyle="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">This is the header<o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>\n<UL style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type=disc>\n <LI class=MsoNormal \n style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in"><SPAN \n style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">This is the first bullet<o:p></o:p></SPAN></LI></UL>\n<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN \nstyle="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>\n<UL style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type=disc>\n <LI class=MsoNormal \n style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in"><SPAN \n style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">This is the second bullet with some “stupid quote marks” <o:p></o:p></SPAN></LI></UL>\n<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN \nstyle="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>\n<UL style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type=disc>\n <LI class=MsoNormal \n style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in"><SPAN \n style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">This is the \n third bullet, with an:<SPAN \n style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></SPAN><SPAN \n style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><A title=http://unclickable-link/ \n href="blocked::BLOCKED::http://unclickable-link/">http://unclickable-link</A> . </SPAN><SPAN \n style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">This is the rest\n of the third bullet.<SPAN \n style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></LI></UL>\n<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN \nstyle="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><SPAN \nstyle="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>\n<UL style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type=disc>\n <LI class=MsoNormal \n style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list .5in"><SPAN \n style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">This is the \n fourth bullet<o:p></o:p></SPAN></LI></UL> And what does that mess do, you ask? Note the closing and opening unordered lists. Note that they're nested in paragraphs. Note that styles are applied to the containing paragraphs, to the lists, to the list items, and then to the multiple spans within each line of each item. Got it figured out yet? All of it can be replaced by: <UL>\n <LI>This is the first bullet</LI>\n <LI>This is the second bullet with some "normal quote marks"</LI>\n <LI>This is the third bullet, with a http://link/ This is the rest of the third bullet.</LI>\n <LI>This is the fourth bullet</LI>\n</UL>\n Microsoft has trained people to believe they shouldn't look at the code, because it's beyond human comprehension anyway. When people use this crap for actual web development, how do they troubleshoot display issues with web pages? No, don't answer. I know they just poke randomly at the interface until it looks good in their browser. And if someone makes them test it in other browsers, they poke randomly some more. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. http://DocHope.com
Post #259,457 by jbrabeck 6/20/06 10:53:52 AM Reply	That looks like something Saved As html from Word A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. (Herm Albright)
Post #259,460 by drewk 6/20/06 11:02:21 AM Reply	Actually from an email, probably composed in Outlook === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #259,554 by scoenye 6/21/06 1:09:02 PM Reply	You haven't seen Publisher go at it... I wanted to post an excerpt from [link\|http://users.online.be/~tdn15618/\|http://users.online.be/~tdn15618/] , but I can't. I would have to post the whole thing. Besides doing what you ran into, it embeds the whole lot in XML, which in turn is tangled in a mess of nested comments. It works as a webpage on IE, it somehow displays OK on FireFox, but the links don't work.
Post #259,558 by drewk 6/21/06 1:34:31 PM Reply	Oh dear God That virtually SCREAMS, "Don't look here. Stay in your pretty GUI. Code is hard. You don't like hard. Go click something." === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #259,667 by static 6/22/06 3:16:54 AM Reply	Displays in Opera, too. But again, the links don't work. "Insert crowbar. Apply force."
Post #259,669 by scoenye 6/22/06 7:32:28 AM Reply	And I just realized why... [link\|http://users.online.be/~tdn15618/IttoRyuDojo_bestanden/image007.gif\|Yikes!] The "links" are all really GIF's where IE then overlays some kind of image map on that is contained in the XML to make them work. Someone in Redmond should be committed over this... And given that the comments contain essentially a complete scripting language outside of Javascript and VBScript, one may wonder if there aren't another few undiscovered avenues of abuse in there as well :/
Post #259,675 by drewk 6/22/06 8:48:58 AM Reply	Huh? In IE6/XP it displays as a table with regular text links. How does it turn into an image in other browsers? As for why they're doing it, it's because MS HTML editors try to treat the browser window as an application surface.[1] Which means they try to absolute-position everything, and fix the fonts the way they look in your development environment. To answer my own question above, I would guess Publisher expects that IE is going to render the way you have it in your dev GUI, and if it detects other browsers it renders gifs so it can override your preferences. Have you tried changing your client string to IE and see what it looks like? [1] I had a Visual Studio acolyte tell me that when explaining why he couldn't make a trivial change to the HTML. He didn't actually know HTML all that well, and wouldn't know how to change what VS was putting out anyway. Yes, his primary job was web development. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #259,697 by JayMehaffey 6/22/06 2:47:27 PM Reply	Re: Huh? Open [link\|http://users.online.be/~tdn15618/IttoRyuDojo_bestanden/image007.gif\|http://users.online....nden/image007.gif] to see what he is talking about. The page basicly has everything in it twice, once as an image and once as MS custom XML. The idea must be to force browsers to display it correctly by making everything but IE display images. There is so much custom crap and weird declarations thrown in that thing I can't even see how it is supposed to work though. Jay
Post #259,699 by drewk 6/22/06 3:28:27 PM Reply	Yeah, that's what I was saying in the third paragraph === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #259,700 by scoenye 6/22/06 4:05:25 PM Reply	Way beyond UA strings... ... this appears to be [link\|http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/vml/SHAPE/introduction.asp\|VML] . MS proprietary, so only True Internet Explorers™ need apply...
Post #259,466 by ChrisR 6/20/06 11:57:41 AM Reply	That's what I spent all day yesterday doing... ...cleaning up code from html generators. I supplied them with a current set of html files that used a nice clean (and properly indented) list. They sent back the html with the lists translated to paragraphs (like the above). I converted it back to nice clean lists. fun, fun. While doing this, I also had to track down another bug that was causing grief for the application - an image with no src tag: <IMG height=1 src=""> No problems with Firefox, but with IE the page would display fine, and then cause grief a couple of pages down the line. Couple of hours trying to figure that one out. I had cleaned up the html, running it through a validator, and this was flagged, but I had assumed that the html people did this for a reason (big mistake). Shouldv'e fixed it at that point, instead of having to guess why I got such weird behavior.

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