This is more aimed to those brand new to programming or brand new to html development, but as always, criticisms and additions are welcomed.
VBScript I think is renowned for its ease of use for programming, and for getting things done quickly while maintaining readability. This plus Internet Explorer's tendency to render almost anything you dump into a webpage makes it that much easier for the inexperienced and experienced to get something done. (It could make utterly no sense in the order of the html tags but IE just might render it "correctly" anyway). But with such ability to mean what you say instead of say what you mean in developing your programs, you set yourself up for a massive failure when your browser/HTA no longer interprets your meaning like it used to:
So if you are building your applications the wrong way from day one without knowing it, then when the browser finally does the right thing (IE8) and not guess your meaning, you are no longer saying what you meant to when you first wrote your program. So how do you fix this? How do you prevent yourself from being one of those people who have to rewrite their program every time a new browser comes out? What if you are shipping your HTA on a CD and have no way of fixing it? Well this is what I hope to help you out with and clarify a bit.
#1 - Proper page formatting:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>My Foo Bar Application</title>
<!-- hta tag should go around here //-->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<style type="text/css">
#Foo{...}
</style>
<script type="text/vbscript">
Option Explicit
Dim some 'You Dim some, you lose some...
</script>
<head>
<body>
<script type="text/vbscript">
'Maybe something more?
</script>
</body>
</html>
Now to explain why. First off having a doctype is extremely important. This tells the browser what you are actually writing so it doesnt have to guess. (It guesses wrong alot more than you think). Also declaring a doctype will allow you to do more cool things than you could without (Which I wont go over in this initial post. you can read about this on the
quirksmode website).
Next thing to notice is that html tags are all lower case now. Those of you who have built web pages long enough may have noticed this change in the trend. (You use to make all html tags uppercase). This is no longer the case, so try and break the habit and keep them lowercase. For now your pages will still work, but to insure future compatibility and to save yourself some effort, try to keep them all lowercase. (Not including doctype, since this is not an html tag, but a browser instruction.)
Indentation. Indenting tags is for readability so you and others don't get lost in your code. You can use either 4 spaces or a single tab. Since there is no written specification on which to use, Its probably best to go off of the "common practice" of using 4 spaces per indent.
If your making an HTML application, stick that hta right below the title tag like Microsoft suggests. There is no common standard for this, and your page wont break otherwise, but at least everyone will know where to look for it.
The content type meta tag. This is a bit more detailed on the explanation why and such so to keep it simple and straight to the point, I SUGGEST you use UTF-8 instead of other encodings so you don't get those weird square blocks on your page when you mess with non-ASCII characters. Plus you're required by the W3C standard to include this meta tag anyway, so might as well do it right. Once again, your page will still work without it, but you may run into some unexpected results down the road if you don't follow the habit.
CSS (the stylesheet <style> tag). Something else that I have seen ignored pretty often is people not using a
mimetype. (type="text/css"). You may not know it, but there is more than 1 type of stylesheet language out there so its best not to give the browser the opportunity to mess this up and make a guess at what you write, so include this. Its also important to keep that stylesheet high up in your page, so the browser knows what stuff is supposed to look like before it draws it on your screen. (Remember using the older browsers that would draw a big table on a webpage, and then redraw it after the page loaded and it resized the screen?). CSS is a very powerful tool that separates structure and presentation (the tags on the page are made separate from what they are supposed to look like so you don't have 10 attribute tags on every html element). So if you're using an attribute to change how something looks on the page, you're doing it wrong, and its more than likely that your page is going to stop working one of these days and I don't mean the distant future. Besides, your pages will be smaller, and you can do more cool stuff.
Even though vbscript is only supported by Internet explorer (and things based off of it), there is a
mimetype format that should be applied to your script tag. (<script type="text/vbscript">). Other browsers are on the verge of pushing multiple languages as well, so its best to get in the habit early. (Some versions of Firefox support VBScript with a plugin).
Use Option Explicit at the beginning of your script, and take off On Error Resume Next. If you have it and don;t know why, you should probably take it out.
The <script> tag should only go inside the <head></head> tags or inside the <body></body> tags. Anywhere else is wrong. (This used to be different a few years ago, but there is now a standard). The script you put in the <head> tag should be code you need execute or in memory before the page is loaded. The code in the body should always be at the end. Don't use Document.write() or Document.writeline(). Use the DOM, that's what its made for.
This is far from all inclusive, and I have barely scratched the surface on best practices to follow and I have no doubt others have much more to contribute. By using some of these suggestions and more, you can be sure that once you put your program on the internet, intranet, on a CD, or anywhere else, it will still work pretty much exactly the same 10 years from now. Can you say the same thing about what you have already written?
<message edited by TNO on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 6:25 AM>