Matt Austin - Python, Django, open source, and other internet shenanigans

Python "Mobile Snakes" presentation

2013-12-24T11:51:00+00:00

Back in November I gave a quick presentation to the Perth Django/Python Users Group.

It covered a brief history of Python on mobile devices (Maemo/MeeGo/Nemo/ Sailfish), and an example Python/Qt application which has a custom UI for each platform.

The slides can be downloaded here:

Mobile Snakes (November 2013)

Cross-platform mobile python development with native UIs using QML

2013-11-05T13:54:00+00:00

I've been playing round with developing native UIs for different mobile platforms using QML.

I've quite a fan of 'common-base, separate UI' development, and QML provides a great way to implement it.

Code is available on github.

Fremantle (Maemo 5)

Harmattan (Maemo 6 / MeeGo)

Ubuntu Touch

Sailfish

Perth Trains – Live Departures ported to Sailfish

2013-05-19T12:48:00+00:00

I'm pleased to announce that "Perth Trains" has been ported to Sailfish OS, using Silica QML components.

The app provides a simple way to view 'live' departure times of train services across Perth. Versions for MeeGo Harmattan and Maemo 5 are also available.

I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow's announcement from Jolla as to what the N9's successor might look like!

Source code is hosted on github.

Perth Trains is now available in the Nokia Store

2012-06-19T22:58:00+00:00

My Perth Trains live departures app for the Nokia N9 is now available for download in the Nokia Store.

Configuring iiNet VOIP (iiTalk) on the Nokia N9 (and N950)

2011-09-13T22:21:00+00:00

The Nokia N9 running MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan is soon to be released here in Australia. I'm lucky enough to be in possession of a developers device, and I thought I'd post a quick follow-up on my previous guide for configuring iiNet VOIP (iiTalk).

Like it's predecessor (the N900), the Nokia N9 has completely integrated support for Mobile, VOIP, Skype, and Google Talk calls - you can make and receive calls on these services just like a usual mobile call, straight from the address book or dialing pad.

This means you can use the N9 with iiTalk, rather than using a headset hooked up to a computer.

Here are the settings I configured on the phone:

Remember you will also have to configure port forwarding to the IP address of your phone on your wifi network – read iiNet's documentation for details.

User name: {your iiNet VOIP phone number}@iinetphone.iinet.net.au
Password: {your iiNet VOIP password} (*it's different to your broadband password)
Use for telephone numbers: Checked
User name: {your iiNet VOIP phone number}
Transport: UDP
Outbound proxy: sip.{state}.iinet.net.au`
Port: 5060
Discover public address: Checked
Loose routing: Unchecked
Keep alive mechanism: REGISTER
Keep-alive period: 2 minutes
Auto-detect STUN: Unchecked

Perth Trains - Live Departures for Nokia N9 (MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan)

2011-08-21T16:30:00+00:00

Thanks to Nokia for providing me with a N950 MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan developer device. I've now ported my Maemo application to PySide/QML, and a preview release of Perth Trains (v0.1) is ready.

This application provides a simple interface to check the 'live' departure times of train services across the metropolitan area of Perth, Western Australia.

The application can be installed by downloading the deb package.

Any feedback is most welcome. The application uses Python/Qt (PySide/QML). The project homepage and source code can be found at: https://github.com/mattaustin/fremantleline.

Heart Internet - Domain Name "Full DNS Management" Warning

2010-06-21T21:10:00+00:00

Just a quick heads up to warn people who may be relying on Heart Internet's "Full DNS Management" service which is included when registering/managing domains through them.

The problem I discovered was with creating multiple TXT records. The scenarios for this have become much more commonplace recently, for example on one of my domains I wished to create an SPF record, an SPF v2 record, and a Google DNS domain verification record (for use with Google Webmaster Tools) - not an unreasonable expectation.

When creating TXT records, the system will only allow one TXT record per "node" (root-domain or subdomain). There are no error messages or warnings - just that further TXT records don't appear after "saving" the changes.

In January, I contacted Heart Internet's support asking them to investigate the issue. The reply wasn't very reassuring:

"However, if you require the ability to add multiple SPF/TXT records to the same node then this will involve an update to our system so I recommed you submit that request using the Feedback form in your control panel. It will then be reviewed by the relevant department and you will not usually receive any reply unless they require more information."

I completed the feedback form, but true to the original support response - I did not receive any reply.

I don't think I'd have an issue with this as long as the limitations of their DNS management were made clear, however the text used to describe the service on the domain registration sales page is "Full DNS Management", and full DNS management this is not.

By May, I still had received no reply (not unsurprisingly considering the tone of the ticket response). I tried to create a second TXT record, but still had no success. I re-opened my original ticket, claiming that the "Full DNS Management" statement could be misleading, but I just received the stock-response again:

"I understand but I strongly recommend you submit the Feedback form again with your suggestion as it will then be dealt with by the relevant department. Please note that you will not receive a reply unless they require more information from you."

My request, was not a suggestion - it is reporting a bug with their "Full DNS Management" platform.

Finally, I'd like to say that all other aspects of their domain services I have used have been great (I haven't tried the hosting products). I would still recommend them for domains, as long as you are sure you will never require multiple TXT records! I hope by bringing this issue to attention that action may actually be taken to resolve it.

Update 26/06/2010: Heart Internet sent me a message on Twitter to let me know this problem has now been fixed! Excellent!

Fremantle Line: Transperth Trains Live Departure Boards for N900 and Ubuntu

2010-01-16T14:29:00+00:00

I have been playing around with pygtk (python and GTK), and have managed to come up with something resembling an app to provide live departure times for Transperth trains:

I've named "Fremantle Line" after Maemo 5's codename, Fremantle. It is also the destination of one of Perth's 5 train lines.

It also works in portrait mode:

It is primarily intended for the Maemo 5 platform on the Nokia N900, but will also run under Ubuntu:

Still needs plenty of work, but I am finding it quite useful while out and about in Perth.

Configuring iiNet VOIP (iiTalk) on the Nokia N900

2009-12-26T18:05:00+00:00

I just succeeded in configuring iiNet's VOIP service (I get iiTalk free with my DSL connection) on the Nokia N900 mobile phone. One of the many great features of the N900 is that it has completely integrated support for Mobile, VOIP, Skype, and Google Talk calls - you can make and receive calls on these services just like a usual mobile call, straight from the address book.

This now means I can use iiTalk from my handset, rather than using a headset hooked up to my desktop computer.

For reference, here are the settings I configured on the phone:

Remember you will also have to configure port forwarding to the IP address of your phone on your wifi network - read iiNet's documentation for details.

User name: {your iiNet VOIP phone number}@iinetphone.iinet.net.au
Password: {your iiNet VOIP password} (it's different to your broadband password)

Use for telephone numbers: Checked
User name: {your iiNet VOIP phone number}
Transport: UDP
Outbound proxy: sip.{state}.iinet.net.au
Port: 5060

Discover public address: Checked
Loose routing: Unchecked
Keep alive mechanism: REGISTER
Keep-alive period: 2 minutes
Auto-detect STUN: Unchecked

Nokia N900

2009-12-25T14:37:00+00:00

I recently received my N900 (it had to be forwarded on to me in Australia from the UK) - and it's easily the best phone i have ever used. Maemo 5 rocks, and its amazing to be running this kind of software on a device like this.

The web browser is fantastic (based on the gecko backend) - I've composed all of this post on the device using the standard wordpress backend.

Seems to work fine with Ubuntu as well - it shows up as a mass storage device and a GSM connection when I connected it to my machine with USB.

I have been attempting to improve my python skills, so maybe I'll attempt to create some simple python and gtk apps.

Disabling The Annoying Middle-Click Load Clipboard URL Behaviour In Firefox

2009-07-13T22:42:00+00:00

I recently bought an ASUS EeePC 1000HE, and have been very pleased with it. I immediately installed Ubuntu 9.04, and was delighted to find all functionality working out-of-the-box.

However, the one thing that has puzzled me the last couple of weeks has been random websites loading in Firefox as I was scrolling web pages (with the two-finger multi-touch functionality), or sometimes even an error dialogue saying the URL was invalid and could not be loaded.

It turns out that this is because the touchpad sometimes interpreted my scrolling as a middle-mouse-button click - which (previously unknown to me) causes Firefox to load the text in the clipboard as a URL.

This behavior is easily disabled by going to about:config in the address bar, searching for middlemouse.contentLoadURL, and changing the value to false.

Hopefully this might help anyone experiencing the same issues as me. There is more info on the middlemouse.contentLoadURL property at MozillaZine.

Epiphany Webkit on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)

2009-06-15T14:37:00+00:00

Update 05/09/09: since I originally posted this information it looks like the Webkit Team re-organised their PPA. I have updated the instructions - thanks to those who let me know.

I just installed the Epiphany Webkit 2.27.2 browser from the Webkit Team PPA. It seems pretty speedy - and the flash plugin can now used.

Add the Webkit Team PPA and Epiphany Webkit Team PPA repositories by adding the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

# Epiphany Webkit PPA
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/epiphany/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/epiphany/ubuntu jaunty main

Add the Webkit Team PPA Key:

wget -O webkit.key http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get\&search=0x991E6CF92D9A3C5B
sudo apt-key add webkit.key

Install epiphany-webkit:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install epiphany-webkit

Not sure if this will replace Firefox on my desktop machine (I won't be able to give up my Firefox extensions). But I will certainly use this as my main browser on my netbook.

RealPlayer on Ubuntu 8.10 & 9.04 (Intrepid & Jaunty) 64-bit Machines (AMD64)

2009-04-13T15:09:00+00:00

I recently needed to install RealPlayer and the RealPlayer mozilla firefox plugin so that I could listen to Adam & Joe's show on BBC 6 Music.

I had previously been using the mplayer mozilla plugin, and although playback worked, it was quite choppy (it didn't seem to buffer too well), and I could not pause/resume or seek.

My first thought was to look in the Medibuntu repositories, and sure enough, there was a realplayer package - unfortunately it seems that this did not include the mozilla plugin.

My next try was to look at the RealPlayer for linux website, but it only has a download for the 32-bit version. I did notice that there was a link to helix player for other platforms. Helix player is an open source media player on which RealPlayer is based. I tried helix player, but this can not play back proprietary codecs (and therefore not the real stream from the BBC website), however it did include a mozilla plugin!

I tried a combination of both - I installed RealPlayer from the Medibuntu repositories, and installed the mozilla plugin from the helix tarball to my home directory. And it works!

Instructions follow:

Enable the Medibuntu repositories.
Install the RealPlayer and libstdc++5 packages: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install realplayer libstdc++5
Load RealPlayer (Applications > Sound & Video > RealPlayer), and in Tools > Preferences, select the hardware tab, and set the audio driver to OSS. Press OK, and close RealPlayer.
Download and unpack (into a temporary location) the Helix Player for AMD64 - I grabbed the linux-2.6-glibc23-amd64 tar.
Copy the contents of the "mozilla" folder to ~/.mozilla/plugins (in your home directory - you may need to create the plugins folder).

Update: Looks as if I may have jumped the gun a bit - looking at the files installed by the medibuntu realplayer package, it does indeed look as if it comes with the mozilla plugin. I do not know why it wasn't working for me (maybe it places it in the wrong location?) - but I am running fine with the above solution (even if it is a bit messy).

Installing thummer 0.01 on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server

2009-01-14T20:00:00+00:00

thummer is a website-snapshot and thumbnailing utility I am working on, built using django. Read my previous thummer blog post to find out more about the project.

Assumptions

In this article, I am assuming that we are installing thummer on an existing Ubuntu server (8.04 or later) with Apache already installed, and that you are comfortable with editing apt's sources.list file.

Step 1: Install A "Fake" X-Server

If you do not have a desktop environment installed on your server (probably a good thing!), then you will need to install xvfb, which provides a virtual screen so that we can capture the rendered output of the website:

Xvfb provides an X server that can run on machines with no display hardware and no physical input devices. It emulates a dumb framebuffer using virtual memory.

sudo apt-get install xvfb

Step 2: Install CutyCapt

We now need to install CutyCapt (webkit rendering).

First, we need to install the cutycapt dependencies and build tools:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

For hardy only: We also need some packages from hardy-backports - add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy-backports main restricted universe multiverse``

Now install the required qt4 packages:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libqt4-webkit libqt4-svg

It's now probably a good idea to remove (or comment out) the hardy-backports lines from your sources.list file.

Download cutycapt source, and expand the tarball:

cd ~/
wget http://cutycapt.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cutycapt/CutyCapt.tar.gz\?view\=tar
tar -xvvzf CutyCapt.tar.gz\?view\=tar

Compile cutycapt:

cd CutyCapt
qmake
make

Step 3: Install Django

First install some packages we'll need later:

sudo apt-get install python-django python-imaging python-pysqlite2 libapache2-mod-python

For hardy only: The version of django hardy ships with is too old for thummer. Install Jaunty's version of python-django from the updates repository by downloading the .deb file from Launchpad (remember to keep an eye out for future security updates):

cd ~/
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/17665378/python-django_1.0-1ubuntu1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i python-django_1.0-1ubuntu1_all.deb

Step 4: Install & Configure thummer

Download thummer, expand the tarball, and move the extracted files to /var/www:

cd ~/
wget http://launchpad.net/thummer/trunk/0.01/+download/thummer_0.01.tar.gz
tar -xvvzf thummer_0.01.tar.gz
sudo mv thummer_0.01 /var/www/thummer

Make sure subversion is installed:

sudo apt-get install subversion

Download the required site-package, sorl-thumbnails:

sudo svn checkout http://sorl-thumbnail.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/sorl /usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/sorl``

Create the database, and initial admin user:

cd /var/www/thummer/thummer
./manage.py syncdb

Set owner so that the apache process can write to the database:

sudo chown -R www-data /var/www/thummer/database

Set owner so that the apache process can write to the media directory:

sudo chown -R www-data /var/www/thummer/media

Update the django website settings:

sudo nano ./settings.py

Make sure that "XVFB = True", specify the full path to the database for DATABASE_NAME.

Ensure the full path to the CutyCapt binary is correct.

Step 5: Configure Apache

Ensure that the python module for Apache is enabled:

sudo a2enmod mod_python

Create a virtual-host site configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/thummer

Paste in the following configuration - replace "thummer.domainname.com" with your desired domain name:

<VirtualHost *>

  ServerName thummer.domainname.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/thummer/thummer

  <Directory "/var/www/thummer/thummer">
    AllowOverride All
    Order Allow,Deny
    Allow from All

    SetHandler python-program
    PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE thummer.settings
    PythonPath "['/var/www/thummer'] + sys.path"
  </Directory>

  # Static Media Content
  Alias /media /var/www/thummer/media
  <Location "/media">
    SetHandler None
    Order Allow,Deny
    Allow from All
  </Location>

  Alias /admin-media /usr/share/python-support/python-django/django/contrib/admin/media
  <Location "/admin-media">
    SetHandler None
    Order Allow,Deny
    Allow from All
  </Location>

</VirtualHost>

Enable the site, and restart apache:

sudo a2ensite thummer
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Bam! Thats It! Enjoy, and let me know how it goes!

Usage

Just use the following URL syntax to reference the image (e.g. in img elements):

http://thummer.domainname.com/[width]/[height]/[crop]/http://url-to-capture/

the value of [crop] can either be 0 or 1, where 0 = scale & fit, and 1 = scale & crop.

e.g. to generate a 300x300 pixel cropped thumbnail of the BBC News website:

http://thummer.domainname.com/300/300/1/http://news.bbc.co.uk/

<img src="http://thummer.domainname.com/300/300/1/http://news.bbc.co.uk/" alt="BBC News website thumbnail" />

And here is the result:

Remember you can access the admin interface by going to http://thummer.domainname.com/admin where you can delete snapshots - so that they are regenerated next time they are requested.

New Google Favicon

2009-01-10T14:12:00+00:00

I noticed today that Google has a new favicon (http://www.google.com/favicon.ico).

I made a quick hi-res mock-up using inkscape:

New Google Favicon

I still can't make up my mind if I like it or not.

Website Thumbnail Generator Web App - thummer

2009-01-10T11:37:00+00:00

Over Christmas I began learning django and python. I always find it better to learn new languages when you are applying what you read to a project that you are actually interested in, and think might come in useful. Well, after finding this great article on website thumbnail generation using cutycapt and django I decided to make a small web service / web app which would generate and serve website thumbnail screenshots of varying sizes.

I've always had difficulty with the "free" web thumbnail services out there - they usually limit the number of requests and/or thumbnail sizes as well as using watermarks or requiring link backs. And this is understandable - running this kind of service en-mass is resource hungry, and those servers aren't going to pay for themselves.

The idea of thummer is to allow people to set up their own thumbnail service on their own server, allowing them to generate snapshots of websites at any size with no restrictions.

Unfortunately because of some dependencies (CutyCapt requires qt4 and an X server) setting it up isn't quite as easy as I'd hoped, but isn't very difficult (lots of steps - but not tricky).

~~I'll post some instructions in the near future for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server.~~

I have now posted the (rather lengthy) installation instructions for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

I have set up a project page on Launchpad for thummer, so any bugs and questions can be tracked. The current release can be downloaded from Launchpad here.

A demo I set up is available here (but may disappear in the future if it starts getting hammered!).

This is my first django/python project, so any feedback is more than welcome!

Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML

2006-11-01T00:05:00+00:00

"Work In Progess"

This article is work in progress. It will be expanded upon and become more reader friendly - at the moment it is just a brief list of my ideas.

This is a topic of much debate, but I have decided on my strategy.

XHTML has a much stricter markup than using HTML 4. This is one of the most appealing aspects of using it. If you decide to use it you must abide by the rules.
I wish to use XHTML, but also want it to be as compatible as possible with older browsers (if compatibility with really old browsers is of the utmost concern, you should probably stick to HTML 4.01 Strict).

Serving up XHTML:

Use XHTML 1.0 (Strict / Transitional). XHTML 1.0 should be served as application/xhtml+xml, however it may be served as text/html. Any version of XHTML later than 1.0 should not be served as text/html.
Serve as application/xhtml+xml to user agents which support it (e.g. Mozilla FireFox, Opera).
Serve as text/html to user agents which do not specify acceptance of application/xhtml+xml, but do accept text/html (e.g. Internet Explorer).
Serve as application/xhtml+xml (i.e. as it should be) to user agents which do not specify acceptance of text/html (e.g. the W3C Validator).
Using ASP.NET 2.0? See: Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML using ASP.NET 2.0.

Implications:

Use UTF-8 character encoding.
Only add the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> declaration if serving as application/xhtml+xml. It should normally be included, but is not required when using UTF-8. Because IE6 switches to "quirks" mode when this is included, omit when serving as text/html.
Only add the <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> element if serving as text/html.
Mark all <style> and <script> contents as CDATA (using the backwards-compatible method). See: Marking Script and Style as CDATA.
Follow the XHTML 1.0 Appendix C HTML Compatibility Guidelines.
Stick to the 4 XHTML Safe Named Entities: < for <, > for >, & for &, " for ". ' for ' is not supported in IE6. For this and all others use numbered entities (e.g. ' for ').
Check that all your JavaScript works. You can't use document.write() or innerHTML (this is from my reading and is unchecked/tested).
Make sure you style the <html> element, as the <body> element doesn't cover the entire viewpoint.
Validate, validate, validate! Make sure your XHTML is perfect, and that your pages work in a multitude of browsers.

Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML using ASP.NET 2.0

2006-11-01T00:04:00+00:00

This example code goes some way to serving XHTML properly, as outlined in the article: Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML.

Idealy, text/html should only be served when the user agent specifies acceptance of text/html, but not application/xhtml+xml. However, Internet Explorer 6 does not return anything useful in it's HTTP_ACCEPT response.

Place the following code in the Page_Init section of your master page:

String strContentType = null;

// Determine if the user agent returns any AcceptTypes (HTTP_ACCEPT) response
if (Request.AcceptTypes != null)
{
  // Determine if the user agent can handle XHTML served as "application/xhtml+xml" (e.g. FireFox, Opera)
  if (Array.IndexOf(Request.AcceptTypes, "application/xhtml+xml") > -1)
  {
    strContentType = "application/xhtml+xml";
  }
  else
  {
    // If the user agent does not specifiy acceptence of "application/xhtml+xml", then serve as "text/html" (e.g. Internet Explorer)
    strContentType = "text/html";
  }
}
else
{
  // If AcceptTypes is null, then serve as "application/xhtml+xml" (e.g. W3C Validator)
  strContentType = "application/xhtml+xml";
}

// Set the Response Content Type
Response.ContentType = strContentType.ToString();

if (strContentType == "text/html")
{
  // Generate a "content-type" meta tag in the page head
  HtmlMeta hmtContentType = new HtmlMeta();
  hmtContentType.HttpEquiv = "content-type";
  hmtContentType.Content = strContentType.ToString() + "; charset=UTF-8";
  Page.Header.Controls.Add(hmtContentType);
}
else
{
  // Generate xml declaration
  Response.Write("<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
");
}

// Set the page encoding
Response.ContentEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;

// Send a Vary header to inform proxy servers that content negotiation is taking place
Response.AddHeader("Vary", "Accept");

Note

When served as application/xhtml+xml, all <style> and <script> in the XHTML document must be marked as CDATA. Because ASP.NET automatically generates JavaScript, this can be a problem. See Marking ASP.NET 2.0 Generated JavaScript as CDATA for a workaround.

Marking ASP.NET 2.0 Generated JavaScript as CDATA

2006-11-01T00:03:00+00:00

The following code example is a workaround for marking ASP.NET generated JavaScript as CDATA, which is required when serving XHTML ASP.NET 2.0 pages as application/xhtml+xml (see Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML using ASP.NET 2.0).

Place the following code in your master page:

protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
  StringWriter stwHtml = new StringWriter();
  base.Render(new HtmlTextWriter(stwHtml));
  String strHtml = stwHtml.ToString();

  // Enclose ASP.NET generated client ECMAScript / JavaScript in CDATA Wrapper
  Regex regScriptCDATA = new Regex("(<script\stype="text\/....script">(?:\s)*?)" + "(?:<!--\s)" + "((?:.|
)*?)" + "(?:// -->)" + "((?:\s)*?<\/script>)");
  String strScriptCDATA = "$1" + "<!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--
" + "$2" + "
//--><!]]>" + "$3";

  strHtml = regScriptCDATA.Replace(strHtml, strScriptCDATA);


  writer.Write(strHtml);
}

You may need to add the following at the beginning of your master page code:

using System.IO;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

Marking Script and Style as CDATA

2006-11-01T00:02:00+00:00

When using XHTML, the contents of <script> and <style> elements must be marked as CDATA. This is essential when serving XHTML correctly (as application/xhtml+xml).

When possible, use external script and style files and reference these from your XHTML document (behavioural and presentational separation). However, the examples below show how to place <script> and <style> inside your XHTML document correctly. This method should be compatible with older browsers, and therefore degrades gracefully.

Marking `<script>` as CDATA:

<script type="text/javascript">
  <!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--
    ......
  //--><!]]>
</script>

Marking `<style>` as CDATA:

<style type="text/css">
  <!--/*--><![CDATA[/*><!-- */
    ......
  /*]]>*/-->
</style>

ASP.NET 2.0

If you are serving ASP.NET pages as application/xhtml+xml (see Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML using ASP.NET 2.0 ), then the automatically generated JavaScript will not be marked as CDATA, and will therefore not work. For a workaround see: Marking ASP.NET 2.0 Generated JavaScript as CDATA.

The Importance of Standards Compliance and Accessibility

2006-11-01T00:01:00+00:00

The aim of this article is to underline the importance of standards compliant web pages in promoting usability, compatibility, and accessibility - therefore allowing equal opportunity and equal access to content for all.

A History of Non-Compliance

When Netscape lost the "Browser Wars" in April 2002, Internet Explorer was in complete dominance of the web browser market - with a 96% share (source: OneStat.com). For web developers at the time, this meant that designing for Internet Explorer was all that mattered. The dominance of a single web browser led to a disregard for standards compliance.

Accessibility & usability problems when sites were accessed using other browsers.
Decreased efficiency due to increased file sizes, and website code not following a standard set of rules.
Misuse of HTML as a design tool.

The Benefits of Standards Compliance

The number of different ways to access the internet are increasing. Some of the less common user agents include:

Mobile phones
Televisions
Text-mode browsers
Text-to-speach synthesisers
Braille browsers
Robots (such as search engine spiders)

Standards compliance can be seen as a way to "future-proof" a website. New browsers will still correctly render websites constructed using past standards.

In the United Kingdom and Australia, accessibility is the law. The implementation of standards is a vital step towards accessibility. Accessibility benefits those with and without disabilities.

The use of standards is the only way to ensure that a website is accessible by all visitors, no matter how they access the web. By ensuring accessibility you are not neglecting any of your potential visitors.

Summary

Adherence to standards = a big step towards a functional, compatible, and accessible website.

Matt Austin - Python, Django, open source, and other internet shenanigans

Python "Mobile Snakes" presentation

Cross-platform mobile python development with native UIs using QML

Fremantle (Maemo 5)

Harmattan (Maemo 6 / MeeGo)

Ubuntu Touch

Sailfish

Perth Trains – Live Departures ported to Sailfish

Perth Trains is now available in the Nokia Store

Configuring iiNet VOIP (iiTalk) on the Nokia N9 (and N950)

Perth Trains - Live Departures for Nokia N9 (MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan)

Heart Internet - Domain Name "Full DNS Management" Warning

Fremantle Line: Transperth Trains Live Departure Boards for N900 and Ubuntu

Configuring iiNet VOIP (iiTalk) on the Nokia N900

Nokia N900

Disabling The Annoying Middle-Click Load Clipboard URL Behaviour In Firefox

Epiphany Webkit on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)

RealPlayer on Ubuntu 8.10 & 9.04 (Intrepid & Jaunty) 64-bit Machines (AMD64)

Installing thummer 0.01 on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server

Assumptions

Step 1: Install A "Fake" X-Server

Step 2: Install CutyCapt

Step 3: Install Django

Step 4: Install & Configure thummer

Step 5: Configure Apache

Usage

New Google Favicon

Website Thumbnail Generator Web App - thummer

Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML

"Work In Progess"

Serving up XHTML:

Implications:

Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML using ASP.NET 2.0

Note

Marking ASP.NET 2.0 Generated JavaScript as CDATA

Marking Script and Style as CDATA

Marking <script> as CDATA:

Marking <style> as CDATA:

ASP.NET 2.0

The Importance of Standards Compliance and Accessibility

A History of Non-Compliance

The Benefits of Standards Compliance

Summary

Further Reading

Marking `<script>` as CDATA:

Marking `<style>` as CDATA: