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Iowa Tom

By Iowa Tom
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Iowa Tom

+Iowa Tom

Posted
Posted

Why is it when I type in:

 

<font color="red">

 

to a geocaching webpage I am designing or trying to modify that geocaching.com automatically adds extra quotation marks to make this?

 

<font color="“red”">

 

I seem to constantly struggle with those blasted little " " that crop up. I often forget to look for them and spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out why the colors or the font style etc. are not working! As far as I can tell it isn't terribly predictable either.

 

Do I need to make the text to a certain font or convert it to plain text before pasting it to the webpage?

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Shilo

+Shilo

Posted
Posted (edited)

Why is it when I type in:

 

<font color="red">

 

to a geocaching webpage I am designing or trying to modify that geocaching.com automatically adds extra quotation marks to make this?

 

<font color="“red”">

 

I seem to constantly struggle with those blasted little " " that crop up. I often forget to look for them and spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out why the colors or the font style etc. are not working! As far as I can tell it isn't terribly predictable either.

 

Do I need to make the text to a certain font or convert it to plain text before pasting it to the webpage?

 

Try this:

 

<font color="#FF0000">Red</font>

That should make the word "Red" the color red.

Edited by Shilo
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Iowa Tom

+Iowa Tom

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I am now convinced that it is a software problem with the Groundspeak (or whoever) software. It seems to be designed to automatically "correct" problems with HTML that is submitted. It is interesting that they even capitalized Groundspeak even when I didn't when I typed it in here.

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roolku

+roolku

Posted
Posted

 

<font color="“red”">

 

 

If you look carefully, you will notice that the inner "double quotes" are a different shape. They are not proper quotes (I would guess you use MS-Word to type your text, as it will change quotes to smart quotes as you type). As html tidy doesn't recognise them as quotes it will treat them as part of the attribute value and add its own. So make sure you use proper quotes (ascii 0x22).

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Iowa Tom

+Iowa Tom

Posted
  • Author
Posted

 

<font color="“red”">

 

 

If you look carefully, you will notice that the inner "double quotes" are a different shape. They are not proper quotes (I would guess you use MS-Word to type your text, as it will change quotes to smart quotes as you type). As html tidy doesn't recognise them as quotes it will treat them as part of the attribute value and add its own. So make sure you use proper quotes (ascii 0x22).

Please tell me what (ascii 0x22) means. :o Right now, after getting my computer fixed, I only have Microsoft Works. Not that that matters I suppose. I have even tried saving the HTML I write as a text file then paste that in but I still get the same problem.

 

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DeRock & The Psychic Cacher

+DeRock & The Psychic Cacher

Posted
Posted

Roolku is right. Word/Works is creating quotes that HTML Tidy isn't recoginzing.

 

Using ASCII characters is one way to work around this.

 

Another less demanding work around you can use is to create your HTML code in a simple text editor like NotePad or WordPad. Both of these should be included with your computer. Remember to also save all your HTML work as a text file too (with a .txt extension). HTML Tidy will recognize quotes (and everything else) created this way.

 

NotePad and WordPad can usually be found under Accessories in the ALL PROGRAMS area of your Start Menu.

 

Deane

AKA: DeRock & the Psychic Cacher - Grattan MI

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Iowa Tom

+Iowa Tom

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Iowa Tom,

 

May I suggest the Big List of HTML tags? This is what I used when I started hand encoding my cache pages in HTML.

Thanks for this and thank you everybody. I learned a lot about what to use by looking at the source info on cache pages that I was impressed with.

 

I have had people suggest programs that do the HTML for you but I prefer doing it the long hand way. That's how I learn. I have made a lot of autocorrects that will finish the tags when I type in a minimal amount characters. Like f.. makes <FONT> and so on. For a guy that uses the Columbus method when typing, "When I find a key, I land on it", any thing I can do to save time helps. :o

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Prime Suspect

+Prime Suspect

Posted
Posted

 

Please tell me what (ascii 0x22) means. :) Right now, after getting my computer fixed, I only have Microsoft Works. Not that that matters I suppose. I have even tried saving the HTML I write as a text file then paste that in but I still get the same problem.

 

Try Nvu for creating HTML. Unlike Word, Nvu is designed for that purpose only (and it's free). Just copy everything between the <body> tags to your cache.

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Fledermaus

Fledermaus

Posted
Posted (edited)

For those of you who want to write their own HTML web and cache pages, I would like to recommend "CSE HTML Validator Lite".

 

For a copy of the FREE program(no strings attached), download it from here:

 

http://www.htmlvalidator.com/lite/

 

It's FREE and it does just about everything for the beginner & experienced. I have been using this program for several years now and have had no problems with it. It sure beats the pants off of programs like Front Page and other "cheater" programs. If you have the time, check out some of my colorful & graphic cache pages.

 

When creating your own cache pages, as stated by "Prime Suspect", only submit that which is BETWEEN the <body> and </body> tags, excluding these tags as well. There are several HTML tags/commands that GC does not allow, for the sole purpose of protecting their web site from "hack attacks".

 

BTW, my personal webpage was written with it:

 

http://www.geocities.com/kd7krh/index.html

 

/\/(°w°)\/\

Edited by Fledermaus
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sTeamTraen

+sTeamTraen

Posted
Posted

Please tell me what (ascii 0x22) means. :laughing: Right now, after getting my computer fixed, I only have Microsoft Works. Not that that matters I suppose. I have even tried saving the HTML I write as a text file then paste that in but I still get the same problem.

 

Must... resist... comment... about "Microsoft Works" being an oxymoron... darn.

 

Basically, Works or Word is trying to put the cutesiest-looking speech marks in your text, so your grandma will like the look of it. Unfortunately, HTML was designed by geeks, and they aren't interested in the fact that the speech marks produced by Works/Word look cute; they just want standard quote marks, as used by every computer (*) since about 1960.

 

Microsoft could have told you about this sort of thing, but perhaps they figure that most people just want their grandma to be happy reading their letters. It's the general engineering problem of trying to make one tool for two purposes.

 

 

 

(*) Except IBM mainframes, of course.

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Tharagleb

+Tharagleb

Posted
Posted (edited)
I still don't get it. I use Word, and I'm not having any problems with my html.

 

Ambrosia, go into MS Word and type: "abc", you will either get straight quotes or begin and end quotes. If you get straight quotes then Word's auto-correct feature is either off or set to not mess with the quotes. In MS Word 2003 version this setting is here:

 

Tools

Autocorrect

Tab: Autocorrect as you type

Replace as you type, check box: "Straight quotes" with "Smart Quotes"

 

In Office 2007 everything is buried somewhere in the ribbon and I can't find anything at all! :laughing:

Edited by Tharagleb
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roolku

+roolku

Posted
Posted (edited)

I still don't get it. I use Word, and I'm not having any problems with my html.

 

Funnily enough what Microsoft considers to be 'cute' (to speak in sTeamTraen's terms) differs with the locality setting on your computer. For example in Germany the first quote gets moved to the bottom of the line. Maybe grannies in your reqion quite like the straight quotes? :laughing:

 

And as Tharagleb pointed out, there is a setting to disable the replacement which may be checked on your computer.

Edited by roolku
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Ambrosia

+Ambrosia

Posted
Posted
I still don't get it. I use Word, and I'm not having any problems with my html.

 

Ambrosia, go into MS Word and type: "abc", you will either get straight quotes or begin and end quotes. If you get straight quotes then Word's auto-correct feature is either off or set to not mess with the quotes. In MS Word 2003 version this setting is here:

 

Tools

Autocorrect

Tab: Autocorrect as you type

Replace as you type, check box: "Straight quotes" with "Smart Quotes"

 

In Office 2007 everything is buried somewhere in the ribbon and I can't find anything at all! :shocked:

How interesting. So are you saying that straight quotes are what I'm supposed to be using to be compatible with Groundspeak?

 

The box is checked, so when I type quotes they're begin and end quotes. But some of my html in there is that way, and some is straight quotes. I'm wondering if that's from html that I've copied from online? I've never thought that there's ever been an issue with my html, whichever quotes I use. But perhaps I'm just oblivious. I'll keep that in mind from now on, thanks!

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roveron

+roveron

Posted
Posted

If you want to see if your quotes, or any other character, will translate correctly, cut and paste it from your document/editor, whatever, in to a command prompt. You'll see what it will really look like.

Notepad totally sucks as an editor, it often hides what it's really doing too.

Also, writing html documents in Word, or nearly any word processor other than WordPerfect is crazy. It puts in gobs of crap and makes huge files.

EditPlus is a good windows editor, it's nagware.

There's also Jedit which is free and runs on Mac OS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows.

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CdirtO

+CdirtO

Posted
Posted (edited)

Sorry, I gotta toss in my 2c worth here.

 

First, MS Word & FrontPage corrupt all html code severely. About 6 months ago, a friend here at work and I were assisting another friend of his with his website. Mike, (my friend) adamantly refused to use anything but Word to develop his page.

 

I used, FirstPage, (No longer free, but I have an ANCIENT! copy).

 

Mike's single screen code printed out at 17 printed pages!

Mine printed on 2.

 

The difference was almost 550Kb in size! We were both in shock! :(

 

Needless to say, if you insist in hand coding AND using a M$ product, USE NOTEPAD!!!!

 

FrontPage is even worse. :(

 

As for learning HTML, CSS, and a few other things, try: w3schools

 

Enjoy

Edited by CdirtO
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