HTML. Don't Do This. What ... & Why?

Sun Oct 26 12:50:51 PST 2003

"Come on, Richard, you're not that dense."

I humbly admit that I am not that dense.

However, others are, I expect.

If I ask questions that seem stupid it is because I want to elicit 
better answers.

Or is that stupid?

The whole question of estimating another's intelligence is not easy. 
Particularly for highly intelligent people, where there is a tendency to 
underestimate everyone else's intelligence until proven otherwise.

I guess it was Paul Vixie who said - obviously quoting someone much 
older and wiser than he is, as, at the time, Paul had not yet had 
children, and did not know any five-year-olds - that if one couldn't 
explain it to a five-year-old, that one probably didn't understand it 
oneself.

Although Paul used it as a[n] [intellectually elitist] put-down, at the 
time, I discerned the kernel of truth within, and have kept this truth 
close at hand when writing documentation, instructions ... and email to 
uppermost, and non-technical, management.

(Who was this older and wiser person? Based on information and belief, I 
think it was Brian Reid, Paul Vixie's mentor, and the person who gave 
him a chance to assume responsibility for maintaining -existing- DNS 
source code, within DEC's Western Research Lab [aka decwrl.uucp]. But, I 
digress.)

The fact is that I recall search engines existing before the META tag 
was invented ... I remember when search engine results could be hacked 
by inserting a lot of keywords into the comments, I remember pages where 
there were orders of magnitude more comments then there was HTML, just 
to spam the search engines ...

(... Such as the web page of that group of people [all web page 
programmers], inhabiting a large mansion in Southern California, a 
saucer cult, who all killed themselves, back in the mid-1990s ... to go 
join the spaceship hiding behind the comet, the one that had come to 
take them away, you know. But, again, I digress; I cite them simply as 
an example of The Way Things Were.)

I expect things will continue changing.

In order to keep people from getting confused, it is necessary to be 
specific ...

-- richard

Cheryl Morris wrote:

> Yeah, it looks like perfectly good HTML and it is. BUT, the real 
> question is "What is Google going to index?"  - the pictures. You want 
> to contact him? Try "images/contact.gif" and Google yields 12,900 
> hits. Where is he?
>
> Come on, Richard, you're not that dense.
>
>
> At 10:15 AM 10/26/2003 -0800, richard childers / kg6hac wrote:
>
>> "Heh! Look at the source code! "
>>
>>
>> As it so happens, I did, before I commented. I don't see anything 
>> objectionable; it looks like perfectly good, basic HTML to me.
>>
>> Like I said, I might or might not agree ... but neglecting to be 
>> explicit in one's disagreement, doesn't help anyone.
>>
>> (Unless of course, one's agenda is to cheaply acquire a short-lived 
>> sense of superiority.)
>>
>>
>> I -still- haven't seen a single person who's got the courage to put 
>> their criticism of the referenced HTML, into words that others can read.
>>
>> Allow me to.
>>
>> Apparently there is nothing actually wrong with the HTML, unless you 
>> are referring to the absence of META tags; but that is hardly a 
>> crime, that is a personal choice ... an option.
>>
>>
>> In the not-too-distant future, search engines will be fast enough and 
>> big enough to not need to rely on META tags ... and all this will be 
>> an obsolete memory of how things used to be, a long time ago.
>>
>> Seems to me that any HTML is better than no HTML, and instead of 
>> slamming someone for not knowing what one knows, one should be able 
>> to explain it, so that everyone knows.
>>
>> Otherwise, one is not teaching anyone anything ... and for this 
>> reason one is not an authority ... only a critic.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> -- richard
>>
>> Richard Childers / Senior Engineer
>> Daemonized Networking Services
>> https://ww.daemonized.com
>> (415) 759-5571
>>
>>
>> Cheryl Morris wrote:
>>
>>> Heh! Look at the source code!
>>>
>>> Cheryl
>>>
>>>> I might or might not agree ... but why?
>>>>
>>>> It is helpful to me, and, I suppose, others, if someone 
>>>> transmitting what they consider to be useful information to me, 
>>>> says, "Don't do this", if they also explain exactly what they are 
>>>> referring to, and why.
>>>>
>>>> While I encourage everyone to cultivate an ablity to read between 
>>>> the lines, it's not the best way to convey technical information.
>>>
>>>
>