Brandon Frohs

Most every web developer has asked himself (or herself) this question at least once. While some applications only need one method of parsing, many should support at least two. There is rarely a need to include support for more than two methods on any single part of an application though.

In this article, several parsing techniques will be covered, including Textile, BBCode, and HTML. WYSIWYG editors will also be discussed. Pros and Cons of each technique will be examined to provide you with facts and my own opinion.

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A day late, but that gave me the chance to test out Google Chrome for myself. At first glance, it doesn’t look like much, but Google has always had a way of doing that. To start off with, the entire interface is different from any other browser. It doesn’t even have the normal title bar. They basically (literally actually) started from scratch when they created this application. Google definitely just made the browser wars more interesting.

Going against their normal routine, they made Chrome open source. I’m not complaining at all, but it surprised the hell out of me. If that’s not enough, they’re encouraging others (Mozilla for example) to use Chrome’s code to make their browser better. So even if you’re not going to use Chrome, you will still benefit from it’s release.

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I remember when I first learned of the work being done on (X)HTML5. I had mixed emotions toward the entire project. Although I’ve been a fan of Firefox, Opera, and Apple for a long time, I don’t agree with the direction they’re going with (X)HTML5. Along with the creation of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (or WHATWG) came the return of the slow progression of HTML.

As a designer/developer, I believe (X)HTML5 is a step backward in the development of the primary web language. One of the major reasons for the creation of (X)HTML5 was the fact that many of the websites on the WWW didn’t switch to well-formed XHTML. They blame website owners, but I blame the major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari). It may just be a pet peeve, but I’ve always used well-formed HTML. Even before I knew XHTML existed, I was putting quotes around all of my attributes. I’ve also always used lowercase tag and attribute names. When I began using XHTML, closing empty tags made perfect sense. What doesn’t make sense is why others don’t follow suit. And I just can’t get myself to believe that browsers refuse to conform to a standard that’s been around for years.

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