XHTML W3C Compliance, multiple information in src attribute - html

We are building an image carousel, it displays clickable thumbnails that when clicked, displays the actual image. We therefore need both url to appears in the Html. Since there is no "actualImageUrl" attribute defined in the img tag, we figured out that we could build the thumbnail url like this : /thumb.png?altUrl=actualImageUrl.png. The server does not care of the actualImageUrl querystring param and we can use javascript to parse the scr attribute and figure out the actualImage Url.
How W3C valid is this ?

Changing the URL of the src attribute is perfectly valid - But you could use the data- attribute - new with HTML5 (although that doctype is not a requirement to use them) and its purpose is exactly this, from the specs :
Custom data attributes are intended to store custom data private to the page or application, for which there are no more appropriate attributes or elements.
w3 specs for custom attributes
Note - you can test validation here

Anything is valid as a src attribute value, in the XHTML meaning for “valid” (a formal thing). It is also otherwise correct to have a query part in such a value and use it in client-side scripting.
But it might be unnecessarily complicated. As you are working with client-side JavaScript, you could include the URLs in a JavaScript array or object, instead of putting them anywhere in HTML markup. For example, you could use an object with thumbnail image URLs as property names and full image URLs as corresponding values, like
var fullImage = { 'thumb.png': 'actualImageUrl.png', ... }
And you would then use this object to pick up the full image URL when a thumbnail is clicked on.
For a more robust solution, which would work even when JavaScript is disabled, you would need to generate the code server-side, generating a elements around img elements.

Related

Is it possible to nest one data: URI inside another?

If I use a data URI to construct a src attribute for an HTML element, can it in turn have another data URI inside it?
I know you can't use data uri's for iframes (I'm actually trying to construct an OSDX document and pass it to the browser with an icon encoded in base64 but that's a really niche use case and this is more of a general question), but assuming you could, my use case would look like:
var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
var icon = document.createElement('image');
var iSrc = 'data:image/png;base64,/*[REALLY LONG STRING]*/';
iframe.src='data:text/html,<html><body><image src="'+iSrc+'" /></body</html>
document.body.appendChild(iframe);
Basically what I'm after is is there anything in a data uri that would break a parent data uri?
Yes you can. I really thought it was impossible, as did everyone I asked.
Example:
Pasting the following into your browser's URL bar should render a gmail logo in an html page that says hello world.
data:text/html,<html><body><p>hello world</p><img src="data:image/png;base64,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" /></body></html>
or for a shorter example courtesy of Pumbaa80:
data:text/html,<script src="data:text/javascript,alert('hello world')"></script>
MSDN explicitly supports this:
Data URIs can be nested.
An old blog entry talks a little bit more about embedding images within CSS using data: :
Neither dataURI spec nor any other mentions if dataURI’es can not be nested. So here’s the testcase where dataURI’ed CSS has dataURI’ed image embedded. IE8b1, Firefox3 and Safari applied the stylesheet and showed the image, Opera9.50 (build 9613) applies the stylesheet but doesn’t show the embedded image! So it seems that Opera9 doesn’t expect to get anything embedded inside of an already embedded resource! :D
But funny thing, as IE8b1 supports expressions and also supports nested data URI’es, it has the same potential security flaw as Firefox does (as described in the section above). See the testcase — embedded CSS has the following code: body { background: expression(a()); } which calls function a() defined in the javascript of the main page, and this function is called every time the expression is reevaluated. Though IE8b1 has limited expressions support (which is going to be explained in a separate post) you can’t use any code as the expression value, but you can only call already defined functions or use direct string values. So in order to exploit this feature we need to have a ready javascript function already located on the page and then we can just call it from the expression embedded in the stylesheet. That’s not very trivial obviously, but if you have a website that allows people to specify their own stylesheets and you want to be on the safe side, you have to either make sure you don’t have a javascript function that can cause any potential harm or filter expressions from people’s stylesheets.

What are "data-url" and "data-key" attributes of <a> tag?

I've faced two strange attributes of an html tag . They are "data-url" and "data-key".
What are they and how can they be used?
For some reasons i can't show the exact example of the HTML file I've found them in, but here are some examples from the web with such tags:
data-key
data-key
data-url
PS: I've tried to Google, but no useful results were found.
When Should I Use the Data Attribute?
Custom data attributes are intended to store custom data private to the page or application, for which there are no more appropriate attributes or elements.
This time the data attribute is used to indicate the bubble value of the notification bubble.
Profile
This time is used to show the text for the tooltip.
This is the link
When Shouldn’t I Use the Data Attribute?
We shouldn’t use data attributes for anything which already has an already established or more appropriate attribute. For example it would be inappropriate to use:
<span data-time="20:00">8pm<span>
when we could use the already defined datetime attribute within a time element like below:
<time datetime="20:00">8pm</time>
Using Data Attributes With CSS (Attribute selectors)
[data-role="page"] {
/* Styles */
}
Using Data Attributes With jQuery (.attr())
Google
$('.button').click(function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
thisdata = $(this).attr('data-info');
console.log(thisdata);
});
Examples and info from here
Those are called HTML5 Custom Data attributes.
Custom data attributes are intended to store custom data private to
the page or application, for which there are no more appropriate
attributes or elements. These attributes are not intended for use by
software that is independent of the site that uses the attributes.
Every HTML element may have any number of custom data attributes
specified, with any value.
The reason why you can't find it in Google is because those attribute are custom attributes generated by user for their own usage.
From seeing your code it seems:
The person who has written this code, wants to store some additional
information with the elements. Not sure he may handle this in
Javascript too.
What you should do is to check the Javascript code completely,
whether he is handling those data attributes or if possible check
with him.
Since you code is using jQuery library, check for .data()
method. After a complete code review, if you find it has no use,
then feel free to remove.
data-* attributes are for adding arbitrary data to an element for use solely by the code (usually client side JavaScript) running on the site hosting the HTML.
In order to tell what the three examples you give are for, we would have to reverse engineer the code that comes with them (unless they are documented on the sites) since they don't have standard meanings.
A new feature being introduced in HTML 5 is the addition of custom data attributes. Simply, the specification for custom data attributes states that any attribute that starts with “data-” will be treated as a storage area for private data (private in the sense that the end user can’t see it – it doesn’t affect layout or presentation). This allows you to write valid HTML markup (passing an HTML 5 validator) while, simultaneously, embedding data within your page. A quick example:
<li class="user" data-name="John Resig" data-city="Boston"
data-lang="js" data-food="Bacon">
<b>John says:</b> <span>Hello, how are you?</span>
</li>

HTML <a> tag attribute

I am needing to attach a value to an <a> element that will be handled in jQuery. Basically, I am aware of the data- attribute prepended to whatever name I want to give it, but I'm not sure this is the best for (X)HTML, as the software I am coding for is declaring DTD's within the tag, so it would not pass (X)HTML 5.0 validation, as I'm not able to change this to exclude the DTD's.
My question is, can I just use the <a> elements tag attribute to hold the URL links that jQuery will grab using the following code: $(this).attr('tag'); The href attributes value is set to: javascript:void(0); because the actual URL triggers an AJAX event and is not an actual page that one should be browsing to in their browser, as it just performs an action to be taken when clicked on.
I'm not entirely sure what the <a> elements tag attribute is to be used for, but am wondering if this is the best known attribute to use to be able to be valid (X)HTML in both HTML 4 and 5?
My question is, can I just use the <a> elements tag attribute
There is no tag attribute in HTML. So that will have all the problems of data-* but without the future support.
If you want to store arbitrary data in HTML 4/XHTML 1 then the best attribute to use is probably class.
The href attributes value is set to: javascript:void(0); because the actual URL triggers an AJAX event
Don't do that. Use a real (working) URI, and add a JavaScript event handler that prevents the default behaviour if it succeeds. If the URI contains the data you need for your JS to run, then all the better as you can extract it from the href attribute.

How does a browser determine which objects to request?

When a browser receives the initial root HTML page, how does it determine exactly which other objects should be requested. Is there a list of HTML tags that the browser will always request the associated content from the server when they are detected?
I realize the need to implement an HTML parser for this, however I am not sure of all the individual tags and attributes that are important.
Browsers parse the HTML, and know which elements (with which attributes) require additional resources to be loaded.
i.e. They implement an HTML parser.

HTML: How to Use href in class attribute of an element

I saw an unusual thing in This Website:
AccuWeather.com
Some tags in this page (like lis) have a href with a url in its Class attribute, Like the picture below,
So what I want to know is:
1- Why they used the href and url in class attribute?
2- how can I do this?
ScreenShot http://4ax.ir/images/screenaja.jpg.
It's nothing special. They're just using JSON encoding to put arbitrary data into a DOM element. An alternative to use to the new data- attributes allowed by HTML5.
Why do you want to do this? Browsers will not treat it specially, and in fact JSON-encoded data makes it an invalid attribute value.
1) Why they used the href and url in class attribute?
They did this mainly on li elements. I guess this has been done in order to provide the data to an event handler, in order to navigate to another page on a click or mousedown event.
2) How can I do this?
Basically they're storing a JSON object in the class name. One could extract the data with JSON.parse(...), but you shouldn't. Use the HTML5 data-xxx attributes instead.