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From: Scott Sauyet on 25 Jan 2010 06:46
On Jan 25, 6:06 am, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedE...(a)web.de>
wrote:
>> Rethink your attitude.
>
> Learn to answer simple questions in a helpful way.  Should my question not
> have indicated that I do not know SGML as well as you?

This is a very amusing response, given that seven minutes later,
Thomas Lahn posted this in another thread [1]:

| On Jan 25, 6:13 am, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedE...(a)web.de>
wrote:
| > Larry wrote:
| > > Is there a way to know if the current page is a result of a get
or
| > > post?
| >
| > Yes.
| >
| > PointedEars

-- Scott
____________________
[1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/msg/c83d5761fe07bbc5

From: Scott Sauyet on 25 Jan 2010 07:36
On Jan 23, 12:00 pm, "Richard Cornford" <Rich...(a)litotes.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
> Scott Sauyet wrote:
>> Well, his comments on the mark-up are only valid for HTML doctypes.
>> Whereas this is valid for HTML4 or XHTML:
>>
>>    <input type="submit" id="butOne" value="butOne"/>
>
> That is a true statement (at least to the extent to which it is possible
> to declare any mark-up fragment 'valid', given that validity is a
> quality that only applies to hole documents in this context), but it is
> a true statement behind which there is an explanation that reveals a
> very messy truth. [ ... ]

Acknowledged. Much of the world of web development is messy.



>> But a major point is that when the OP prefaced the markup with this:
>>
>> | I have something like this (trimmed down)
>>
>> criticizing the markup for its failure to include rows/cols
>> attributes on the textareas
>
> I did not observe any such criticism,

Not directly. But Thomas' only advice was to point the OP to the
validator, which would catch only the comma typos and the row/column
omission.

> though the absence of NAME
> attributes is possibly very significant for the OP's story. When we see
> "Problem is that the two textarea don't seem to post" and textarea
> elements with no NAME attributes thoughts may go to the notion of a
> 'successful control" in HTML. [ ... ]


Yes, and although I should have realized that and pointed it out, no
one who did realize it bothered to point it out. Pointing to the
validator or simply responding "Creative markup" certainly does not
point it out.


>> or for some spurious commas in what's typed in to this post
>
> Those should be subject to complaint. If we have the assertion that the
> mark-up is "trimmed down" it is reasonable to assume that what remains
> was all in the original, even if we cannot know anything about what was
> omitted.

I don't make the assumption that "trimmed down" is that literal, just
that it contains only what the OP believes to be the essential parts.

> [ ... ] Conclusion:
> something critical to the problem has either been "trimmed down" or
> omitted entirely. Thus the possibility of help getting beyond a parade
> of blind guesswork always was negligible.

Possibly, but a quick response like this could have been more useful:
"Well, I don't see any NAME attribute on your TEXTAREAS. Did you
forget to include them? If not, you might want to supply a bit more
context, because there are several problems with the snippet you
supplied."

>> Thomas' critique of my suggestion about "return false" were not
>> only subjective; they also ignored the succeeding paragraph where
>> I explicitly suggested that the OP not change to type="button",
>> but stick with type="submit", for which the default action *is*
>> the form submit we want to cancel.
>
> If you wanted that read as a suggestion to use a submit type button and
> then use its onclick handler to cancel the submission you probably
> wanted to reverse the order of those two comments. My interpretation of
> what you wrote was that - return false; - suggestion was aimed at the
> button type input.

Clearly that was misplaced. I'm afraid it was just a matter of poor
proofreading.


>> Agreed.  I'm sure I won't be a member of this forum for years
>> on end,
>
> (Ignoring the fact that this a newsgroup and not a forum, and its not
> really having members, just participants)

I meant "forum" in the general sense: "a public meeting place for
open discussion." It bothers me that closed online groups have
appropriated the name for their own use. :-(


> Reality may not work up the way you plan it.

It never does! :-)


>> I would not have posted my first message on this thread had
>> someone given the OP a competent answer,
>
> Where browser scripting is concerned, a general answer of; 'start from
> the basis of valid HTML mark-up', seems reasonably competent, at least
> in the face of a question being asked that is at minimum
> self-contradictory.

I spent a fair bit of time in CSS Discuss, and while occasionally
there were people who would simply refuse to look further if there
were validation issues, the more valuable members of the community
would point that out alongside other suggestions.


>> preferring to learn from the most experienced people here.
>
> You (and anyone else interested) will always learn most from attempting
> to answer the questions asked by OPs. It is not necessarily a painless
> process, but it is very effective.

Yes, I've spent enough time on both sides of the classroom to realize
this.


> > But all that had been posted were small-
> > minded critiques of the markup.  After my response, Asen gave a
> > useful critique of my post offering an improvement to my
> > suggestion for the OP, Gregor gave a less useful response that
> > argued against my suggestions but gave no suggestions for the
> > OP, and Thomas gave one that criticized my solution, insulted
> > me, and still offered no help to the OP.
>
> > I believe I am not overly sensitive.  Had Thomas actually offered
> > competent help to the OP, I would not have responded to his
> > insults. But since the only response was, in essence, "Your markup
> > sucks; go away," I didn't feel Thomas had earned the right to
> > insult my efforts unchallenged.
>
> On the whole the uncensored/un-moderate nature of (most) newsgroups is a
> good thing. The price is that nobody is in a position to control what
> anyone else does (at least so long as they don't breach their news
> service provider's terms and conditions). Instead the only influence
> anyone has it on their own actions; by themselves doing the things that
> they think others should be doing (and so, not doing the things that
> they think others should not be doing). In that way, a 'common' or
> 'popular' attitude towards the way things should be done can influence
> the overall 'attitude' of the group.
>
> I have absolutely no time at all for the people who complain about the
> attitudes/behaviour of others and then contribute nothing positive
> themselves. They do no more than waste everyone's time/bandwidth.

Agreed. I hope I'm not in that category. I certainly strive not to
be.


>> I'm curious as to whether someone in this group, had the OP used the
>> following markup (which I think would be valid in HTML or XHTML),
>> would have posted a more useful response:
>
>>      <form id="aform" method="post" action="myAction">
>>        <p>
>>         <input type="submit" id="butOne" value="butOne"/>
>>        <textarea id="tx1" rows="3" cols="20"></textarea>
>>         <input type="submit" id="butTwo" value="butTwo"/>
>>        <textarea id="tx2" rows="3" cols="20"></textarea>
>>       </p>
>>     </form>
>
>> Would that have made a difference?
>
> Those differences actually do little more than introduce another
> question; Is this real XHTML (sent with an appropriate XHTML
> Content-type header, to browsers that understand XHTML), or content
> negotiated (where we have cross DOM issues to consider), or is it
> formally malformed HTML (only ever sent with HTML Content-type headers)?

Perhaps it would have raised those questions, but would it have
generated more useful responses for the OP? What if the short-tag
markup were removed?


>> Is this newsgroup really that petty?
>
> You are likely to find that there is a lot more behind some of the
> things that seem petty than may be obvious at first sight.

Probably, but it's disheartening to see it over and over.

Thank you for your long and detailed response,

-- Scott
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