Mokka mit Schlag » Web Development

I know this site is more than a little slow on occasion. I also know that the static site www.xom.nu which is hosted on the exact same server runs like a bat out of hell, so it’s likely not the server hardware (Mac Mini) or network connection (Speakeasy DSL) that’s at fault. The remaining candidates are:

• PHP (Very likely)
• WordPress (Maybe, but unlikely except in so far as it’s written in PHP)
• Traffic volume (especially comment spammers)
• MySQL (Possible, but I tend to doubt it.)

I’ve got a lot of suggestions for improving performance, and I plan to start trying some of them. I don’t, however, have any good measurements of where this server is spending its time. I’d appreciate it if anyone could share knowledge and experience as to how to determine where the server is taking it’s time, and how to find out what’s making it so slow. Thanks.
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I’m now working on the accessibility chapter of Refactoring HTML. I’d like to mention some automated tools for checking accessibility. The W3C lists a couple of dozen. Which are the best? If you had to pick just two or three, which would you choose?
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I know what an HTML block level element is, but I’m damned if I can say it in a concise, correct, obvious way (which it so happens I need to do in Chapter 4 of Refactoring HTML). In HTML, block level elements include p, blockquote, div, table, ul, ol, dl, h1–h6, and a few others. Generally speaking a block element has a line break before and after it, but that’s really only true in a particualr visual representation. The notion of line breaks doesn’t make a lot of sense in a screen reader, for example.

The HTML 4.0.1 specification defines block elements thusly:

Certain HTML elements that may appear in BODY are said to be “block-level” while others are “inline” (also known as “text level”). The distinction is founded on
several notions:

Content model

Generally, block-level elements may contain inline elements and other
block-level elements. Generally, inline elements may contain only data and
other inline elements. Inherent in this structural distinction is the idea that
block elements create “larger” structures than inline elements.

Formatting

By default, block-level elements are formatted differently than inline
elements. Generally, block-level elements begin on new lines, inline elements
do not. For information about white space, line breaks, and block formatting,
please consult the section on text.

Directionality

For technical reasons involving the [UNICODE] bidirectional
text algorithm, block-level and inline elements differ in how they inherit
directionality information. For details, see the section on inheritance of text direction.

That’s not a great definition though. These seem more to be consequences rather than defining characteristics of block level elements.

Can anyone offer a more precise definition of block element that does not presume a particular rendering? Just what is a block anyway?

What tools are people using to validate their web pages? In Refactoring HTML so far I’m writing about four, somewhat related tools:

• W3C Validator
• LogValidator
• xmllint
• The button/menu item in your editor that says “Validate this document”

Anything else worthy of mention? In particular, is there anything significantly different enough from these four that it deserves to be called out separately? Or is there anything better that should replace one of these options? (This is a relatively small book, and I am trying very hard not to cover absolutely every possibility and option.) Open source tools are strongly preferred.

I just did a quick check with LogValidator on the pages at this site for Refactoring HTML. Besides telling you where the markup is screwed up, LogValidator also figures out which pages are the most popular. The results were not what I would have guessed. After throwing away index pages, favicon.ico’s, Atom feeds and the like it turns out the most popular story of the last year is:
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A lot of old fogies are getting bent out of shape over the idea that 20 or 30 years from now today’s teenagers are going to get hammered by random screeds and bad dating habits they posted on blogs or MySpace. Can I chime in and say I really don’t think it’s all that big a deal? By the time any of this becomes relevant, the electorate will have matured enough that they really don’t care about this.
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