What's this in the source?

June 5, 2001 8:25 AM

Source watch! The MF front page source now includes this:



What does that do?
posted by rodii to MetaFilter-Related at 8:25 AM (11 comments total)

Rodii, my fault. I asked Matt to add it a while back so drop-downs and scroll bars would comply with the appearance of themes on Windows XP. Has no effect on other platforms or browsers other than IE6 on XP.
posted by anildash at 8:42 AM on June 5, 2001

For the record, the code snippet Rodii quoted was:

<META http-equiv=MSThemeCompatible content=Yes>

Feel free to add it to your site so that my scroll bars will look pretty.
posted by anildash at 8:43 AM on June 5, 2001

Goddammit. I used entities so the angle brackets would show up. Why did they get changed back? And how did you avoid it? (Thanks, Anil.)

PS: "My fault"? I was just curious. I don't think it causes any problems for anyone. I'm just a META-tag geek.
posted by rodii at 8:55 AM on June 5, 2001

rodii, you have to double-escape it if you're going to preview first, like so:

&amp;lt;look at me&amp;gt;

(and to write that, i had to QUADRUPLE-escape it, so i know it's not fun)
posted by pnevares at 10:32 AM on June 5, 2001

Aha. And when you post a thread, you *have* to preview it first--there is no direct posting. Dang. (Pablo, looks like you over-escaped it.)
posted by rodii at 10:56 AM on June 5, 2001

test:
<look at me>
posted by pnevares at 12:43 PM on June 5, 2001

rodii: what i wrote was how it should look in your comment box before previewing. worked for me.
posted by pnevares at 12:50 PM on June 5, 2001

Wow, and Microsoft expects everyone to update their webpages Internet-wide for this? Hmmm.
posted by fooljay at 1:58 PM on June 5, 2001

Why can't the XP browser just throw that in there as it's reading the page. That doesn't make any sense.
posted by jpoulos at 4:43 PM on June 5, 2001

They didn't make it change scrollbars and dropdowns by default because some people have custom-colored scrolls or pixel-specific layouts that would get ruined by the new metrics for the UI elements, which are slightly wider and have different colors.

I think it's a good compromise. I don't think they expect everyone to update their pages by any stretch of the imagination.
posted by anildash at 5:55 PM on June 5, 2001

You're right, Pablo, my dumb.
posted by rodii at 7:42 PM on June 5, 2001