Will DNN attempt to produce web standard compliant code in the future?   Many of our clients are now asking about web standards, and DNN falls short in a number of places. 

What are the plans for future versions of DNN regarding web standards?  Is it a priority because the markup that DNN produces is beefy to say the least - in fact it doesn't even validate against it's own DOCTYPE!

What are the issues?

I guess it depends on the release of Whidbey, and how well web standards are supported by Microsoft's .NET controls??  DNN can't be that far away from producing web standard compliant code - just a customisable DOCTYPE, page and container skins using CSS and tableless designs, a rewrite of the FreeTextBox to support CSS styling, and a few enhancements to the core modules?   What am I missing?

I would love to know where this is on the roadmap.

Dax

If you want a head start check here

http://css.schwingnuke.com/

This doesn't answer the question, but...

There are a number of things you can do yourself. First, use the FCK text box, find the free provider floating around here. It's 100% better than DNN's provider for FTB, and FCK supports virtually all web browsers. FTB does not. The only problem is that I find most 3rd party modules assume you use FTB and are too tightly coupled or married to the FTB, so for example FCK won't be sized exactly right. The skins are your next biggest area to make "standard" html code. Of course "standards" are kind of relative. Personally, I don't buy into the whole tabless CSS movement. You just get too much variation across browsers, as apposed to using a simple table. You have to look at what browsers you want to support really. I don't think I'd want DNN "pushing" one variety over another. Heck, a lot of people only care that it's IE compat -- yep, a Windows app that runs off IE. But that's a good point about DOCTYPE.

This link goes directly to an notice for a paid subscription site.  Is there information relevant to the thread there that is free?

portvista wrote:

This doesn't answer the question, but... There are a number of things you can do yourself. First, use the FCK text box, find the free provider floating around here. It's 100% better than DNN's provider for FTB, and FCK supports virtually all web browsers. FTB does not. The only problem is that I find most 3rd party modules assume you use FTB and are too tightly coupled or married to the FTB, so for example FCK won't be sized exactly right. The skins are your next biggest area to make "standard" html code. Of course "standards" are kind of relative. Personally, I don't buy into the whole tabless CSS movement. You just get too much variation across browsers, as apposed to using a simple table. You have to look at what browsers you want to support really. I don't think I'd want DNN "pushing" one variety over another. Heck, a lot of people only care that it's IE compat -- yep, a Windows app that runs off IE. But that's a good point about DOCTYPE.

I've downloaded the FCK editor, and am looking into it, I also like the look of the Cute Editor for ASP.NET (http://cutesoft.net/ASP.NET%2BWYSIWYG%2BEditor/).  In terms of tableless designs - I believe it's far more important that the content of the site is accessable to as many people as possible, rather than the site looking pixel perfect in all browsers.  This isn't going to happen anyway - particularly with older browsers such as Netscape 4; and what about PDA users? or mobile phone users?  or any other future device that comes out...   In my opinion ALL web sites should use web standards - XHTML, CSS and tableless designs.   But you're right DNN shouldn't force a particular DOCTYPE on the user, it should be configurable per site.

As you say, you can work towards a web standard design when you create your skins, and if you use an alternative editor than FreeTextBox.  But there are still changes required to the Core to push forward 100% valid markup and styles.

mrswoop wrote:

This link goes directly to an notice for a paid subscription site.  Is there information relevant to the thread there that is free?

I was moving stuff around and set wrong settings on the free downloads

http://css.schwingnuke.com/Default.aspx?tabid=74

registration for this part is free  you can donload an xhmt default.aspx, css skins and a css menu

Thank you, Armand.

here is what I usually do to make my asp.net sites accessible ( note : for DNN im still looking into the best way )

1. make sure that any basic page validates using a filter that rewrites the returned page so that it validates as xml strict or xml transitional )
2. make sure you choose the correct doctype
3. use semantic html , so if you need to make a list of items dont put in table put it in an unordered or a datalist depneding on the data you are using
4. dont use the label control, that way it always generates span tags, use a literal so you just generate the content and that literal you can encapulate into any tags h1, h2, h3 span div etc
5. use a repeater or datalist to be able to create just the html you want and mothing more.
6. if you use a datagrid for tabular data, either make a modified datgrid for accessible tables or use standard databgrid and rewrite it it the filter
7. put everythign in css usisng defined id's in the tags or classes

for dnn iif I ever have the time to realy dive intomodifying it th way I realy want it ;)

1. use a filter in the core to mod a bare page into xhtml sttrict or transitional
2. set the correct doctype
3. redo a nr of core modules more semantic, put links module, image module faq module ito an unordered list so its more accessible and you can modify this with javascript for more fancier version.
4. instead of the dnn label control make a special literal control eg. dnn:literal type="h3">text</dnn:literal ; this way you have a much broader use of the label control and you can keep accessible and semantic html so use the h1 h2 h3 tags for portal title moduletitle etc.
5. make an accessible datagrid that can be used better with modules. but use them wisely not everything needs to be in table
6. for menu dropdown and action and controlpanel use unordered list and css and maybe a bit of javascript. http://www.nokiko.com the top icon menu is an unordered list with a bunch of CSS.  so this could be a controlpanel easily

Are you suggesting the goal is to be W3C certified, or do you suggest DNN makes their own set of rules and standards? DNN has that module certification roadmap... I wonder how much of it includes accessibility... I think any DNN roadmap should move in the direction of higher flexibility, basically allowing us to "roll our own" in more and more places without being overridden with "core" updates. So we can decide on our own what standards we want to employ.

We agree.  I think our history speaks for itself in this regard.  As interfaces continue to refine, the ability to "roll your own" becomes not only more straightforward but less susceptible to potential future impacts.

It's good to see web developer community moving in this direction:

• From standard sloppy HTML to XHTML.
• From HTML markup to using CSS (http://csszengarden.com/ - a must see site!)
• From client-server to n-tier
• From being stuck with a library to being able to swap out providers

All these are a step towards separating layers of an application and basing it off of agreed upon standards.

However, one I never hear about is the move to XForms. Yes, it is already a w3 recommendation (Oct 2003).

XForms is used to define UI and of course is all defined in xml. It is an alternative to HTML/XHTML forms.

Here is an example:
======
First name: <input type="text" name="firstname">
======
becomes:
<input ref="firstname"><label>First name:</label></input>
======

So, how would this benefit us in DotNetNuke? All the standard dnn UI screens could be laid out in xml. There would be the standard layout or implementation, but you could override it to change almost all aspects of the UI without opening up and changing the user control. Isn't that cool? I'm not sure to what extent it meets the recommended standard, but oneo the top selling modules on snowcovered takes advantage of xforms: XMod.

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/

mm too bad its based on the same constructs so cannot use my excising xforms  ( XMod's forms are based in part on the W3C's "XForms" technology. While XMod is not an XForms processor, it uses many of the same constructs to define forms. Using XForms will allow XMod to be more easily extended in the future.)

Indeed it would be great if we could use stuff like xforms and xslfo for certain parts of dnn input and output. What about an SVG log viewer to keep in the standard of things