Our clients are increasingly asking for W3C and XHTML compliant web sites.

DotNet nuke is riddled with schoolboy HTML or is it standard VStudio output? I have a very basic HTML reference book from 1999 which we use for coding newbies and it contains no uppercase HTML. However it is only 8 years ago so maybe its a bit soon to expect the DotNetNuke team to catch up?

Has anyone in the DNN team made any decision to start the move towards cleaner code?

Almost every module has uppercase html elements and invalid attributes. This means we have to go through a long and arduous process of cleaning any new DNN version.

WHY?

Even the DNN-Blue skin is written in the worst kind of amateur HTML and it isn't even consistent!!

A small example is below.

<TABLE class="pagemaster" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<TR>
<TD valign="top">
<TABLE class="skinmaster" width="770" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<TR>
<TD id="ControlPanel" runat="server" class="contentpane" valign="top" align="center"></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD valign="top">
<TABLE class="skinheader" cellSpacing="0" cellPadding="3" width="100%" border="0">

I could give more examples, one of the most horrifying is from the repository module, an excellent module but the templates contain HTML in all UPPERCASE.

Come on lets move DNN into the 21st century

"horrifying" is a bit overstated.

Since your new on the scene, you could stand to do a little research before blasting the community or core team. You can make dnn xhtml compliant. If you look around you will find lots of examples on making or purchasing compliant skins. If the default repository module makes invalid xhtml, then make a new repository template. If any other modules don't produce valid markup, roll up your sleeves dude and get to work. This is open source. You are free to make all the modifications you want.

Come on lets move DNN into the 21st century

Yeah, what are you doing besides complaining.

As mentioned this is a work in progress, you can make some changes to get it quite a ways there buy just changing a few web.config settings and modifying skins and a few module templates.

It will take some time before this is actually completed and I know that each of the module development teams are being requested by the core to comply with XHTML as soon as possible.  I know we are looking into what is needed for the documents module.

As the individual above mentioned I'm sure that if you find errors, that sending an updated version to the responsible party (team lead etc) would be appreciated, as that will just help the team comply in a more timely manner.

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-Mitchel Sellers
Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, DNN MVP
CEO/Director of Development - IowaComputerGurus Inc.


Visit mitchelsellers.com for my mostly DNN Blog and support forum.

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