Email conversation
| From | Ian Ellis |
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| To | Me |
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| Subject | Convert from ancient html to current standards |
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| Date | 6 May 2006 12:13 |
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Thank you for you informative site.
I have 366 web pages, one for each day of the year, describing science
events. The continue to grow.
I began using Netscape Composer in the Netscape 4.7 era (which uses old
fashioned html standards) and continue to use it for consistency. I use NVu
for more recently created pages. Using it on the early pages produces code
mixed with both old and new.
Do you know if there any way to automate updating code on those legacy pages
from old standards to new standards? I have found nothing so far looking on
the web.
Thanks.
| From | Me |
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| To | Ian Ellis |
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| Subject | Re: Convert from ancient html to current standards |
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| Date | 6 May 2006 14:21 |
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Ian,
> Do you know if there any way to automate updating code on those legacy
> pages from old standards to new standards? I have found nothing so far
> looking on the web.
Sadly not. If you are able to spend the time doing it page by page, you may
find the Mozilla composer useful (the successor to the old Netscape
composer). It has an option to choose if you want to use CSS or HTML for
styling:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/
However, I am not sure if it will be any good for what you are trying to do.
Even the big products like Dreamweaver do not have a great reputation for
being able to fix outdated markup.
The HTML Tidy program may be able to clean up invalid markup, but again, I
am not sure it will be able to clean up old pages (since they were generally
valid, just used practices that are no longer recommended):
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
When I did my recent site cleanup, I had to fix more than 1000 pages by
hand, and a further 400 using a custom written PHP script, designed
specially for the markup I had used on those pages.
So the last words are; good luck.
Mark 'Tarquin' Wilton-Jones - author of http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/