I am having many Netscape "cannot find a connection" messages this morning. don't know if it is Netscape (I'm on 4.7) my connection (T1, so I kinda doubt it) or the host.

also? and I haven't mentioned it before although I've seen it since the day we went live. Occasionally people's taglines look like clickable links - occasionally it's been an entire post. Is this just do to unclosed html stuff in posts? It is always gone when I reload or go up one page and then back.

ie 5.o

w2k

getting the server can't be found -- looks like it happens about every 3rd time I hit next or message center.

Looks like the hosting service is having issues.

I'm having same issues.

IE 5.5 (work)

IE 5.0 (home)

T1 connection at work

Cable connection at home

I think it's HostRocket and nothing to do with the board, but the style sheet seems to be flitting in and out of existance. (About 2:10 EST, W2K, IE5)

Hostrocket says "We are currently experiencing some netork latency, the issue is being worked on and will be fixed as soon as possible."

In terms of closing HTML. This would not be tough to program, but might give some performance issues.

Search through the post for allowed tags, count each tag (number of bolds, number of fonts , number of pres .. etc.) Count closes at the same time (number of end bold, number of end pre, etc..). where there is a positive difference, generate closing tags, and add to end of post.

If we did this, (and I'd be glad to create the code), I think we might add an html check box next to the posting box (by default unchecked).

If checked then we parse for HTML -including generating closing tags. IF not hmtl is just posted as literals (giving a new way to generate fake tags as well). Since a lot of posts have nt html, the savings in not having to parse those would make up for the extra time in checking for and generating closing tags.

Worth the trouble? Or not?

Can I suggest a simple hack instead? How about just appending closing tags to each post [/i] [/a], etc.? Would that work?

It should. I've never run into a browser that runs into trouble with extra closing tags. But this many extra closing tags? We might discover an unexpected bug. Also it does not take care of all cases. What if someone leaves two tags open? three? Or course the really simple solution is the one we use. Ask people not leave tags open. When they forget close the tag for them, and remind them so they can edit.

As someone who works with XML, I just cringe at the thought of extra closing tags. Yes, it might work fine in all the browsers, but every time I looked at the board I'd wonder if there were extra ending tags just lurking under the surface of the pretty formatting.