Welcome to the first public version of the new release of the site! I
have been spending the last few months updating the site to reflect
all the new information due to the releases of HTML 4.0 and Internet
Explorer 4.0. I am still not quite done, but I really wanted to get more
current information out to the readers. This is the first version I
have felt even moderately comfortable with releasing in months. I have
made hundreds of other changes as well in re-checking much of the
support information and issues that have been brought up. Many of
these changes have been waiting a long time to see the light of day
on the site, so I am glad they have finally made it.
I have also taken the time to re-design many of the top level interfaces
to the site in order to ease usability. Hopefully the site will be much
more natural to use now. I welcome ANYfeedback on this issue.
Oh, did I mention that I converted the site to using Cascading Style
Sheets? If you are using a browser that does not support CSS, the change
will be immediately obvious, but the CSS version attempts to look
as closely as possible like it used to. Why
did I make this change? To put it simply, convenience for me and helping
to make it more accessible for others. If you are using the downloaded
version of this site, you can change the CSS
files to alter the appearance of the site to your needs.
I have changed so much in this release, you may be interested in the
Change History
for the site. This page is an ever-growing list that can be referenced to
help people using the downloaded version determine whether and/or when
to update or not.
Short-Term To-Do List
There are several more things that are still incomplete about the
site right now. I would really like to finish them soon, but I
am only human and the holidays are coming. =)
Keep checking back as I am actively working on these right now
and things SHOULD progress more quickly now.
Common Attributes Pages
These pages exist right now (%core,
%events and
%language) but are in
very poor shape/rough draft state. I am still considering how best to present this
information without it becoming overwhelming (both to readers and to
me =)
More Internet Explorer 4.0 Information
I have done most of the research on IE 4.0, but I still have some
knowledge holes in what they actually support (namely the LANG attribute
to most elements.) I am trying to finish this up, and I have marked
questionable support areas with a '??' notation.
Do some serious work on the scripting
portion of these pages.
I admit it, they suck right now. 8-{
I have done a lot of research on event handlers (which is the bulk of
what I will be presenting) but it will take me a few weeks to organize
this information so that it does not overwhelm (really...there are 33
different event handlers now! about a dozen are applicable to almost
all elements! This may get very ugly! =)
Long-Term Wish List
I still have some things in mind that I would like to do with the site,
but have not yet had time to do. I will be adding these when I get
the time. Please feel free to e-mail
me with ideas, topics or critiques to improve the site.
Improve the CSS portion of the site
I would like to document the worst of the CSS behavioral bugs in the popular
browsers (although this has been done better elsewhere), break up and
totally re-design the CSS properties pages, re-design the main CSS
Guide index page and start tackling the CSS extensions (which are developing
into CSS2.) Not easy and I may wait a little while on this...
Survey More Browsers
I have started the process necessary to survey the Opera browser, and
I will probably add the information for that in the next major
update - it will probably take at least a month, maybe two to do the
research required. I would love to survey other browsers as well, such
as Lynx and AOL's browser when I find the time.
Create a real test file library.
I have lots of test files, and many of them are not well organized.
I am also missing test files for entire areas. This portion of the
site will be separate from the reference section, but WILL be an
integral part of it nonetheless. This could take a LONG time to
develop, so there is not a high priority on this.