Colin Cochrane

Colin Cochrane is a Software Developer based in Victoria, BC specializing in C#, PowerShell, Web Development and DevOps.

A Code Snippet That Speaks For Itself

4. December 2007 Colin Cochrane HTML, Humour (5)

While working on a client's site today I came across this gem that I thought you might enjoy. I'll let the snippet speak for itself.

[code:html]

<script type="text/javascript">
document.write('<');
document.write('!--  ');
</script>
&lt;!--   
<noscript> 
(Removed to protect anonymity of client)
</noscript> 
<!--//-->

[/code]

*Smacks Forehead*

Comments (5) -

Sam
12/4/2007 3:23:55 PM |

That looks awful. I am not really familiar with this stuff though--did some code generator make that? If so, which one? I guess if the HTML works, it can't be that bad. A lot of pages don't even work.

Colin Cochrane
12/4/2007 3:42:29 PM |

I'm sad to say that it is man-made. The site in question is all hand-coded.

Gary
12/18/2007 4:58:52 AM |

OK - for those of us who are new to HTML and Javascript yet thoroughly enjoy your work here, can you spell out what's so funny about the code?

Colin Cochrane
12/18/2007 5:17:43 AM |

You've probably seen web documents where the content of a <script> element has been wrapped in an SGML comment tag like so:
<script type="text/javascript">

</script>

The purpose of the comment tag is to "hide" the script from older browsers that don't support Javascript. Without the comment tag those browsers will render the contents
of the <script> element as normal text. For instance, a page with the following markup...

*****************************
<body onload="dosomething()">
<h1>Products</h1>
<script>
function dosomething(){}
</script>
<p> This is my product! </p>
</body>
*****************************

...would end up displaying as...

******************************
Products
function dosomething(){}

This is my product!
******************************

With this in mind, the snippet in the original post is amusing because it's using javascript to output a comment tag to hide the script from those older browsers...that don't support Javascript.