Gotchas

A weakness of server-based web software is that it depends on user web browsers to comply with established standards.[13] Many web application developers have adopted a conservative strategy, requiring only the simplest common browser features. This attitude is particularly prevalent in the open source software community, since new browser features generally arrive first in proprietary forms, confined to particular makes of browsers on particular platforms. (For example, Javascript was initially an exclusive feature of Netscape browsers. Java support on the Macintosh has typlically lagged behind that of other operating systems). Proprietary plugins (such as Flash) may never be fully available to all client platforms.

To date, Slash requires no special browser features aside from HTTP/1.1,[14] HTML 3.2, and RFC-2109-compliant browser cookies. Individual site administrators can configure their page layouts using more advanced HTML features, but Slash itself requires only the ability to accept cookies (used for user and Author authentication) and to submit HTML forms. Unfortunately, even these minimum requirements can be problematic, sometimes in fairly recent browsers.

Instead of merely redrawing the page, all but the latest versions of Netscape irritatingly reload the page from the server when the user resizes the browser window. If the page happens to contain an HTML form, it will probably lose the content.

Because backSlash requires a preview before committing a Story to the database, Authors will usually have the opportunity to spot these errors before publishing a Story. The potential for mishaps exists, though, so preview your Stories diligently.



[13] Browser manufacturers have begun to take standards compliance seriously. The Web Standards Project (http://www.webstandards.org/) has served as an organized voice of webmasters and web software developers to lobby Microsoft and AOL/Netscape to make their browsers more standards- compliant.

[14] The Virtual Host features, enabled by default in Slash 2.2, require user agents to send the Host: header. Some HTTP/1.0 clients may send this header for forward-compatibility purposes. Most web browsers in widespread use will work here.

Get Running Weblogs with Slash now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.