Technologies used at elyoung.com
This site uses several common web technologies in its development. The two primary ones are XHTML and CSS. This page discusses how elyoung.com makes use of these standard technologies, and the known issues users may encounter. If you are encountering other problems not discussed here, or if you believe you have discovered a problem with this website, please contact me.
XHTML 1.1
The biggest difference between elyoung.com and much of the rest of the web is that it makes use of XHTML 1.1. As a user, you may not notice this at all (and you shouldn't really). I describe my reasoning for using XHTML on the main Web Standards page.
Unfortunately, this choice tends to cause the most headache for many visitors. Most browsers either do not, or do not know how to, support the latest version of XHTML. I've tried to keep track of the known issues preventing many users from seeing my site. They are presented below in the browser list.
Content Negotiation
When a browser loads a page from elyoung.com, it tells the server what kind of documents it accepts. Within this list it should also tell the server which formats it prefers. This allows you to go to a website that has multiple formats and get the one that suits you best. For example: you wish to view a movie on a website and the server has it in Windows Media format as well as Quicktime format. If your browser was configured correctly, the server would automatically send you the best choice depending on your operating system and the plug-ins you have installed.
If only the world worked so perfectly! Unfortunately, browsers are horribly buggy in this respect and webmasters are rarely educated enough to support negotiation properly. This leads to ugly hacks, terrible "Which format would you like?" boxes, and pages that sometimes just don't work.
Because elyoung.com uses XHTML 1.1, it is sent to your browser in the format application/xhtml+xml. This differes from HTML's old text/html. Some browsers don't list that they support application/xhtml+xml, and others list that they prefer text/html. This can cause problems like a web browser "downloading" a website instead of displaying it or, on parts of this site, receiving a "degraded" version.
I understand that it is best to explain to users why their browser is broken. This is why some (but not all) of my pages are offered in "degraded" format. These are separate copies of certain pages handed out to users by my web server. They are XHTML 1.0 Strict documents transmitted in text/html.
CSS
Browser Compatibility
Internet Explorer
I don't even know where to begin with Internet Explorer. The most popular version of the program at the time of writing is version 6. This version is notorious for the way it "supports" web standards. Unlike other browsers which either do or do not support the features outright, Microsoft has decided to implement its own version of the standards which are incompatible with almost every other browser.
At the time of writing, Internet Explorer 7 had been released, but had failed to resolve the vast majority of issues related to web standards. There have been unconfirmed reports that the next version of Internet Explorer (version 8) will support web standards properly. We can only wait.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is my primary browser. It currently supports all of the technologies in use on this site. There are still known issues, but they are typically minor and rarely affect the pages at elyoung.com.
The next version of Firefox at the time of writing is scheduled to be Firefox 3.0. This version adds a new rendering engine which is set to resolve many of the known issues involving web standards. For a brief moment during the development of this version, HTML was preferred over XHTML due to rendering concerns. This is no longer true, and will not be true for the final release.
Konqueror/Safari
For now, I'm lumping the KHTML and WebKit engines together because they are so heavily related. Each browser has its own quirks though, so I might separate these out eventually.
Konqeror does not support content negotiation of XHTML properly. Even though support is there to view and display XHTML, the browser tells the server that it would prefer HTML. This is why Konqueror (and possibly Safari... but I haven't checked this yet) displays the degraded form of my home page. There is a bug open to address this issue.
