Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

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Albert Wiersch
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Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by Albert Wiersch »

I was doing some testing for the upcoming new release of CSE HTML Validator and was testing some sites I was visiting at the time.

It wasn't pretty, for the most part. There were some exceptions though.

But one of the worse ones is bestbuy.com. I thought it was fairly atrocious. Best Buy is a major electronics retailer in the US. They should be able to do better... much better.

It made me think... maybe I should create an award for sites that have some of the worst HTML I've seen. But what should this award be called?
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MikeGale
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by MikeGale »

The issue is widespread.

A while ago I checked out dozens of the biggest sites, worldwide, that claim to use HTML5. (And in the past I've done more thorough analyses.)

A really sorry pack. Cluelessness reigned.

I didn't see much point in publishing, or setting up a system. No point spending time if there's no results.

The widespread laughter of web users might have an impact though!! If doing it some sort of even hand is a good idea, there's a lot of truly awful stuff out there!!
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by Albert Wiersch »

No doubt the issue is widespread.... but some of the stuff is so bad it looks like a kindergartner wrote it.

The point might be for amusement and publicity. :D

Some people might see it, laugh at it, then decide to check their own site and see how bad it is and then feel hypocritical if they don't fix it. :mrgreen:
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RSteinwand
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by RSteinwand »

I was reading an old article other day about the two worst performing websites and all I remember is that Forbes was one of them. (I never liked that site.) http://developers.google.com/speed/page ... ab=desktop

But the BBC scores worse on PSI: http://developers.google.com/speed/page ... ab=desktop
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Albert Wiersch
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by Albert Wiersch »

Interesting. According to the check on the BBC there are several images that could be compressed and resized to save 90%+, saving a lot of data transfer... that is pretty bad if true, especially for mobile users. I didn't look into in-depth though (perhaps there is a good reason that the images are that way and the PageSpeed test doesn't know it).

Other images (listed at the bottom) might be optimized to save a little, like a few bytes or a few K, which I don't think is significant, but those savings listed up at the top were quite significant and should be addressed for sure (barring there being an unknown good reason not to :) ).
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by RSteinwand »

One of those BBC images is actually a bmp file with a jpg extension, sent uncompressed. = )

BMP and ICO (basically a bmp file) should be compressed by the server before sending.
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Albert Wiersch
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by Albert Wiersch »

RSteinwand wrote:One of those BBC images is actually a bmp file with a jpg extension, sent uncompressed. = )
:shock:

Sounds like they definitely need some quality assurance work! :mrgreen:
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by RSteinwand »

Here's a nasty page: http://www.bu.edu/bridge/archive/2002/0 ... eology.htm

Takes forever to load then uses a lot of cpu.
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Re: Award for big sites with terrible HTML?

Post by MikeGale »

I've seen something like the hugely nested markup at the top of the page before. It came from a WYSIWYG editor wielded by somebody who delighted in applying the same markup again and again to a piece of text. (Confirmed my belief in WYSIWYN!)

Hmmm. Boston University, Office of University Relations. Bringing the reputation of the University into disrepute.

With stuff like that they clearly need help!
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