

HTML General HTMLizing tools

Discussion in 'Technical Projects' started by ryubahamut, Aug 23, 2008.

  1. ryubahamut

    is a Site Staff Alumnusis a Programmer Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus

    Jan 18, 2007

    Figured this might be useful to people while HTMLizing something with a lot of tables, like http://www.smogon.com/dp/articles/breeding_guide_part3. It's a Python script that takes a file as input, identifies tables in it and row-alternating them, and then outputs the row-alternated file on stdout. I have tried it on a few table-intensive pages, and it has worked pretty fine.

    Just be careful not to send in a file with any row-alternated table -- the results will be an ugly table with re-alternated rows (instead of ABABAB you'll probably see something like ABBAABABBAAB).
    LurkingBird+ likes this.
  2. X-Act

    X-Act np: Biffy Clyro - Shock Shock

    Feb 17, 2006
    I knew you'd write something like this. :) Excellent!
  3. Blue Kirby

    Blue Kirby Never back down.

    Nov 1, 2007
    Checking Your HTML

    The W3 XHTML Validator is a nice and easy tool that you can use to check the validity of your HTML, and it's been around for quite some time. All you have to do is enter your HTML to be checked, and it will report on whether there are any discrepancies or not. This can be something as simple as using & when you should have used &amp; to display it, so it's really quite a handy tool for finding errors that you might overlook normally.

    You can't just paste the HTML you're going to be using at Smogon, however. This validator works by checking an entire page, not just portions of HTML. Therefore, if the display elements of the page aren't set up correctly, your HTML won't validate even if it is correct. Smogon obviously handles this when you add your code to the site, but that isn't much good if you want to check before you get somebody to cache your entry for you. With that in mind, I've thrown together a makeshift template for you to paste your work into.

    <title>Article Test</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.smogon.com/media/global.css" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.smogon.com/media/page.css" />
    It's pretty straightforward to use. Basically, you finish your HTML code as per usual, and paste it inside the <body> tags, or over the top of my "YOUR HTML CODE GOES HERE" comment. Note that the validator is only interested in your raw HTML, so if the standard header to Smogon documents (as below)

    Blah Blah
    <meta name="description" content="Blah blah blah" />
    it's going to fail. So, while validating, either comment that bit out or remove it altogether. Just remember to add it in once the rest of your document validates.

    Then it's just a matter of actually validating your document. You can either upload it directly or simply copy and paste your code directly. Note that if you validate by direct input, you'll receive a single warning even if the code is all correct which is to do with assumed character encoding. As long as the code actually passes in this case, you're fine since Smogon handles all of that anyway.


    If you're Site Staff, you can actually just paste your HTML code as normal (ie. without using my template) and validate your page directly, so that's worth keeping in mind too.

    Hopefully this will help some of you out - it's always good to be able to check your code instead of flying blind. Post any comments, questions or problems here please. :)
    LurkingBird+ likes this.
  4. eric the espeon

    eric the espeon maybe I just misunderstood

    Aug 7, 2007
    Couple of things I have found handy:

    BBCode to HTML converter
    Remember to make the BBtags visible on posts before copying it over by clicking the A/A button in the upper right of a post while quoting or editing.

    W3 "try it" thing
    Allows you to quickly see how most HTML with turn out (don't try to put whole documents into it, it only likes snippets).
    Timurid_5 and LurkingBird+ like this.

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