Learning the World » internet explorer http://learningtheworld.eu Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:17:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.1 Farewell, XML declaration http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/farewell-xml-declaration/ http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/farewell-xml-declaration/#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:00:04 +0000 http://learningtheworld.eu/?p=102 XML declaration is not required as long as you encode in UTF-8 or UTF-16, you are only strongly encouraged to use it. So as long we are stuck with IE6 I will refrain from using it. […]]]> For years I have been using an XML declaration prior to my DOCTYPE declaration:

  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
  2. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/ TR/xhtml1/DTD/ xhtml1-strict.dtd">

It was obvious for me that such a declaration would be a good thing to have since XHTML is XML after all. Only later I learned that it triggers a bug in IE6 to render pages in quirks mode with a broken box model. But I was used to build workarounds for Internet Explorer bugs since IE 3.0 and never knew anything but the broken box model in IE, so I continued to use the declaration.

Until recently my colleague Thomas Junghans took the trouble to research, and found this phrase in the XHTML specification:

An XML declaration is not required in all XML documents; however XHTML document authors are strongly encouraged to use XML declarations in all their documents. Such a declaration is required when the character encoding of the document is other than the default UTF-8 or UTF-16 and no encoding was determined by a higher-level protocol.

The declaration is not required as long as you encode in UTF-8 or UTF-16, you are only strongly encouraged to use it. Gasp!

Richard Ishida lists some advantages of using the declaration when serving the pages with an XML MIME type or viewing them offline, however I’m convinced the disadvantages prevail.

So as long we are stuck with IE6 — and people say that could be as long as 2014 when support for Windows XP ends (reminder to self: throw a party on 8 April, 2014) — I will refrain from using the XML declaration. Amen.

]]> http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/farewell-xml-declaration/feed/ 5 Extend the Searchbar with OpenSearch http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/opensearch/ http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/opensearch/#comments Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:00:14 +0000 http://learningtheworld.eu/?p=98 OpenSearch is known as an open source format to syndicate and aggregate search results. It was developed by Amazon / A9 and quickly gained support from the big search engines. Their involvement is somewhat intimidating — your site’s not Google, so who wants to syndicate your search results anyway? But if your blog or a client has a loyal readership, it would be convenient if they could just use their browser’s searchbar as a shortcut. […]]]> Screenshot of the searchbar in Firefox with the option "Add Wikipedia (English)" OpenSearch is known as an open source format to syndicate and aggregate search results. It was developed by Amazon / A9 and quickly gained support from the big search engines. Their involvement is somewhat intimidating — your site’s not Google, so who wants to syndicate your search results anyway?

But if your blog or a client has a loyal readership, it would be convenient if they could just use their browser’s searchbar as a shortcut. For example currently we work on a website relaunch for a big German city, and it’s easily conceivable that citizens want to search this site more often.

Here comes a side effect of OpenSearch: the OpenSearch descriptions are machine readable XML files. Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 are two of those “machines” if you let them know the file exists:

  1. <link rel="search" type="application/ opensearchdescription+xml" title="Your website’s title" href="/opensearch.xml" />

Of course that belongs in the head. Now all you need are a few more lines of code in the opensearch.xml file:

  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  2. <OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/ opensearch/1.1/">
  3. <ShortName>Your website’s title</ShortName>
  4. <Description>A short description of the search</Description>
  5. <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
  6. <Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon"> http://yourdomain.com/favicon.ico</Image>
  7. <Url type="text/html" template="http://yourdomain.com/ search/ ?q={searchTerms}"/>
  8. </OpenSearchDescription>

Just change the shortname property, the favorite icon path, the search URI and parameters. Don’t change {searchTerms}. And that’s all, it’s a five minute no-brainer…

Further Reading

Update: Internet Explorer 8 now supports type ahead suggestions, too.

]]> http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/opensearch/feed/ 0 Web Accessibility Toolbar 2.0 for Internet Explorer http://learningtheworld.eu/2007/accessibility-toolbar-2/ http://learningtheworld.eu/2007/accessibility-toolbar-2/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:02:11 +0000 http://learningtheworld.eu/2007/accessibility-toolbar-2/ Web Accessibility Toolbar 2.0 for Internet Explorer was released. It was developed by Steve Faulkner and translated by Benjamin Grießmann from Web for All with contributions from your humble host. Which reminds me that I also translated Gez Lemon’s new and improved Colour Contrast Analyser for Firefox earlier this year.]]> Screenshot WAT 2.0 German

A couple of days ago the German version of the Web Accessibility Toolbar 2.0 for Internet Explorer was released. It was developed by Steve Faulkner and translated by Benjamin Grießmann from Web for All with contributions from your humble host. Which reminds me that I also translated Gez Lemon’s new and improved Colour Contrast Analyser for Firefox earlier this year.

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