Secrets In Websites II
This post is a follow up to the first Secrets In Websites. For those who don’t remember the first time, I point out odd, interesting, funny things in other websites’ code. Yes it takes some time to put a post like this together, that’s why it’s just about a year since the last time. Enough with the intro, read on for the code.
The Code
WordPress.com
You’ll notice a comment sure to make any web developer laugh on WordPress.com’s login page
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://wordpress.com/wp-admin/wp-admin.css?version=MU" type="text/css" />
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<!–[if IE]>
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<style type="text/css">#login h1 a { margin-top: 35px; } #login #login_error { margin-bottom: 10px; }</style>< ![endif]–>
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<!– Curse you, IE! –>
The guys behind WordPress a while back took the site BrowseHappy under its wing. WordPress has always been a strong believer in web standards, so this isn’t surprising (though still amusing). Did you also know that the guys behind it (Automattic) don’t have job titles? Unless you consider “Chief BBQ Taste Tester” to be a real job title. Matt, I hope your job doesn’t kill you with a heart attack.
The geniuses over at Facebook feel the same and put the following on the top of their IE conditionally included stylesheets:
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/* ————————————————————————
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Facebook | IE/PC Hacks | getfirefox.com
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———————————————————————— */
popurls
The ever so popular popurls has the following comment in the header of the page.
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<!–
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__ __
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( \,/ )
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\_ | _/ IN THE FUTURE EVERY URL WILL BE POPULAR FOR 1.5 SECONDS
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(_/ \_) - thomas and the wise popurls butterfly
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-
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–>
RedHat
RedHat was one of the earlier corporate sites to redo itself into a standards based design. They have great respect for those who came before them. In their master CSS file they have the following tribute as well as a little remark about Netscape 4.x:
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/* redhat.com MASTER style sheet
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a tip of the red hat to Zeldman, Bowman, Meyer, Shea, Cederholm, Newhouse, Holzschlag,
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and many, many other CSS and web standards pioneers who have inspired us.
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the CSS, layout and validation status of redhat.com is a work-in-progress. numerous
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web-building worker bees are working furiously to correct the bugs, minimize the hacks
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and validate the code. stay tuned.
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——————————————————————– created June 2004 */
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@import URL("global.css");
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…
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@import URL("dig.css");
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/* —————————————————————- ns4 styles - bah! */
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table {
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border: 1px;
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}
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…
Panic Software
Panic Software has a cool little piece of code for those who browse the product page for Coda (awesome product BTW) with IE and don’t have at least version 6.0:
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<!–[if lte IE 6]>
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<p id="iewarning"><img src="/extras/ripoff/images/ie-warning.gif" alt="IE Warning" title="We hear Firefox is nice!" /></p>< ![endif]–>
I hear it’s pretty nice too.
Panic also has a comment in the head of their homepage that reads:
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<!– This homepage design is not long for this world. Enjoy it while you can!
–>
Twitter (who redirects to drop the ‘www’ BTW) is a very popular service these days. In their HTML they mark which server served up the data. You’ll see it in the form:
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<!– served to you through a copper wire by bennu.twitter.com at 24 Nov 19:08 in 11 MS (d 0 / r 8). thank you, come again. –>
Copper eh? No fiber in your data center? I won’t judge, as long as your bandwidth is plentiful.
WordPress.com
Here’s a bonus from WordPress. While many analytics programs use a 1px transparent “tracker gif” to manage statistics, WordPress did something a little different. At the very bottom on the left hand side, you can see the face of WordPress analytics in all it’s tiny glory.
Mozilla
This technically applies to more than just Firefox. You’d be surprised to see how many times kungFuDeathGrip is in the code base.
Many Sites using Google Products/Services
Many people have noticed strange Google tags on sites such as:
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code
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<!–googleoff: index–>
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all
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<!–googleon: index–>
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over
This isn’t a “SEO” practice, despite some misconception on the web. This is used by the Google Search Appliance, a product made by Google which many websites use to power their own search engines to tell the engine what to read and what to ignore. It wouldn’t be practical for Google to use these “in the wild”. The reason is that spammers could effectively hide an alternate website within those comments. Google’s business is based largely on accurate search results. Spammers have already tried to abuse the CSS property display: none;. This would be even better. You can find code like this on Apple.com among many other sites.
Webmasters can however optimize their side for AdSense using a technique recommended by Google:
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<!– google_ad_section_start –>
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<!– google_ad_section_end –>
This tells Google to give weight to a certain part of your page when deciding what ad to display on the page. This is good for cases where you feel other material on your page is influencing the ads and resulting in off-topic ads.
Infrastructure/Platform
Microsoft
Microsoft’s offering against Linux and Apache is IIS on Windows. Which one would expect they themselves use. What they don’t tell you is that they also have used Akamai (with over 25,000 servers), which uses Linux. They have used Akamai for many things like DNS, and caching files. Rather than “Powered By Windows Server” maybe they should append “hiding behind Linux”.
Myspace.com
Myspace.com was previously Adobe/Macromedia’s model customer because it was written in ColdFusion, and said to be the biggest ColdFusion site on the net (and one of the biggest sites on the net). Many think it still is, but it’s not. While many URL’s suggest it might be because they end in .cfm it’s actually running ASP.net and has been since aprox, 2006. You can confirm this by viewing the headers on some of their pages. You’ll see:
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
MTV.com
MTV.com’s site has search powered by a Google Search Appliance. MTV is also owned by Viacom who sued Google, the parent company of YouTube. The folks at MTV awesomely admitted the irony during relaunch on their blog.
Global Crossing
Tier 1 networking provider Global Crossing really wants you to know how fast they are. Doing a trace could turn up something like this:
7 15 MS 13 MS 14 MS COMCAST-IP-SERVICES-LLC.tengigabitethernet1-4.ar5.NYC1.gblx.net [64.208.222.58] 8 14 MS 13 MS 13 MS tengigabitethernet1-4.ar5.NYC1.gblx.net [64.208.222.57]
Yes that’s right, they use 10 GigE! Just FYI.
Goofy
Firefox 2.0
In Firefox 2.0, go to “About Firefox” (under the help menu for Windows, under the Firefox menu for Mac), and click on credits. You’ll notice Stephen Colbert. He wrote it single handedly, but added some other names because he’s a nice guy. Bonus: I’m on the list too. Above him because I’m better than him. That’s right, I said it.
Handy
Chase
Chase for some reason puts it’s login form in plain text. The submit URL is https, but it doesn’t feel right. They do have a SSL enabled login page, but for some reason they hide it. Here it is for those interested:
https://chaseonline.chase.com/online/home/sso_co_home.jsp
For some reason, most of Google’s services are insecure by default. By simply going to https, you can use SSL for added security.
Gmail: https://mail.google.com
Google Calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar
Google Reader: https://www.google.com/reader
On the next page is the 2008 US Presidential Candidate Campaign sites…
Pages: 1 2
Tags: akamai, analytics, barack obama, bill richardson, campaign 2008, chase, chris dodd, css, democrat, dennis kucinich, duncan hunter, facebook, firefox, fred thompson, global crossing, Google, hillary clinton, html, joe biden, john edwards, john mccain, microsoft, mike gravel, mike huckabee, mitt romney, Mozilla, mtv, myspace, popurls, redhat, republican, ron paul, rudy guliani, secrets in websites, stephen colbert, tom tancredo, twitter, wordpress
January 11th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
http://www.panic.com/extras/ri.....arning.gif warns about IE 6 and under.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Interesting post. I do have one suggestion, though. Change your table styling to make it easier to differentiate between rows. They kind of blend together at the moment.
January 12th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I can confirm that Chris Dodd’s site uses Drupal while Bill Richardson’s does not, even though it looks like it does. The giveaway is the absence of jQuery and the CSS stylesheet paths.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Robert, thanks for doing this, especially the Presidential Campaign Analsyis section. I’ve started doing something similar so many times, but failed to complete the task.
Everyone…be sure to look at “Page 2″ for the campaign analysis. I know I almost missed it.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
As kourge said, Bill Richardson’s site isn’t drupal powered.
Drupal is PHP based CMS
As
Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1
I’m wondering how it can be a drupal powered
BTW, nice article.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Conditional stylesheets or header information in webpage contents is due to follow of non standards in browser designs.
To easily view what is contained in header or page contents you can use web tools like : http://tools.khrido.com/
January 12th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
DUGG!
http://digg.com/design/Secrets_In_Websites_II
January 12th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
themegarden.org: Seems different parts of the site are powered by different things. For example the action subdomain seems PHP powered. Evident by a PHP Session cookie.
January 12th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
[...] Read the whole article: Secrets in websites, Part II [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Hah! I was very interested to see that the democrats lean more toward open source, and the republicans lean more toward licensed software like .net
Keen observation!
January 13th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Sorry man! It’s popular right now on digg
January 13th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Secrets In Websites II…
This story has been submitted to Stirrdup. Your support can help it become hot….
January 13th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Wow, wish they had the same thing for google search engine optimization.I placed this with extra secrets especialy how to get to first page google on my blog, http://www.opentopix.com/topic.....n-websites
January 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
“other websites code” should be “other websites’ code”.
“the site BrowseHappy under it’s wing” should be “the site BrowseHappy under its wing”.
Please either:
1. Learn how to make the possessive, particulary of “it”;
2. Eliminate all apostrophes. That way you’ll be wrong, but consistent.
Either way is fine.
January 13th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Gravel is using a Drupal site too (http://www.gravel2008.us/CHANGELOG.txt) Or at least the CHANGELOG.txt-file of Drupal
January 13th, 2008 at 10:35 am
You call those funny?
Small minds get amused by small things…
January 13th, 2008 at 10:41 am
“Disclaimer:If you post a comment that’s beyond the technical scope of this post, it will be deleted. This isn’t a politics site, and I don’t have the patience or time for it. My blog, my rules. No exceptions.”
Censorship on a political website? **** you.
January 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am
[...] «w00t» Tags: No Tags [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 11:23 am
[...] Secrets in websites. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am
yea i know i do this sometimes to my websites… its fun
January 13th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Wow, could you please have a header to this post that says “for geeks only.” What the **** is a code?
January 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Jo Wouters: updated. Yes that looks like Drupal.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:51 am
MySpace isn’t running ColdFusion (Adobe’s app server), but they are still running CFML (the language). Many (perhaps all?) of their CFML servers are now running BlueDragon.NET (from New Atlanta). It’s a native .NET implementation of the same scripting language as Adobe’s ColdFusion.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:53 am
myspace still uses coldfusion but not adobes flavor. If i am not mistaken they use BlueDragon which compiles into .net code. Adobes CF compiles into java. So, that would explain why myspace is reporting as a .net server.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Delicious Delicacies for bots… humans just ignore ;-).
January 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Why is the use of Dreamweaver surprising?
January 13th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I’m not sure if leaving the HTML in this comment will work, but here goes:
SARS preparedness in Harvard.edu (http://www.harvard.edu, line 516):
<!–
–>
Digg debug code: (http://www.digg.com line 555)
Wikipedia leaving messages for their SysOps team (http://www.wikipedia.com line 3):
Arstechnica showing their thoughts on IE < 7 (http://arstechnica.com line 15)
January 13th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
There’s system called “Moodle” designed as a CMS for teachers. All of its library files are called “somethinglib.php”. There’s an unused library called “womenslib.php” that redirects to the Wikipedia entry.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I’ve been told Obama is running Movable Type.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
[...] collection of web-site nosey-ness is evidence here that web devs do have a sense of humour! Well, almost. Nice to see the geeks at [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Great article.
“Copper eh? No fiber in your data center? I won’t judge, as long as your bandwidth is plentiful.”
Every person that connectes to the internet via phone line will be using copper wire.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Wow some of these are really interesting lol
January 13th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Patrick Weigel: Please either 1) apply for a grammar police license or 2) get a life and mind your own **** business. No one cares about typo’d apostrophes.
OT: Love the article!
January 13th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Found elsewhere on the web:
“PWS stands for Panther Web Server which is our own cache-server built completely in-house by the Panther team - it is NOT a web-server (per se), and it is certainly NOT any variation of a Microsoft product. As you guys pointed out, our software runs on Linux and we are a CDN that is distributed network with more than 45 locations worldwide.”
Found in the comments of this link: http://blogs.sun.com/chengfang.....istmas_day
January 13th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Secrets In Websites II…
robert.accettura.com have hit Digg with Secrets In Websites II | Robert Accettura’s Fun With……
January 13th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
The global crossing thing is normal, it’s actually the port that is used during the cross-connect to the other provider. Ten Gig 1/4…
If you look around you’ll see most providers do that.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Here’s another GREAT one, one a band’s website.
http://www.themarsvolta.com/video/
January 13th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
[...] Accettura se ha puesto a esa labor, indagando ése y otros aspectos técnicos de esas webs. En su informe final podemos conocer no sólo los posibles CMS, sino también el resto de tecnologÃas usadas en sus [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
[...] comments in famous websites! You’ll laugh read more | digg [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
[...] read more | digg story [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
[...] Secrets In Websites Interesting, funny things in websites’ code. (tags: HTML webdev humor fun) No Comments Leave a Commenttrackback addressThere was an error with your comment, please try again. name (required)email (will not be published) (required)URL [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Said NO NO NO to Micro$oft
January 14th, 2008 at 1:41 am
The chase one drives me crazy. I got in the habit of putting in a fake id/password the first time and their error page is on https. Doesn’t really make a difference, but it makes me feel just a little bit better about putting in my password on their site.
January 14th, 2008 at 4:31 am
[...] Het is grappig om te zien dat ook de bekende websites gebouwd zijn door mensen zoals jij en ik. In de code kom je dan ook wel eens verwijzingen tegen die gewoon humor zijn. Vooral IE heeft het te verduren. De voorbeelden zijn te vinden op: http://robert.accettura.com/ar.....bsites-ii/ [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 5:38 am
[...] Digg & Secret in Websites [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Obama appears to use jQuery as well:
January 14th, 2008 at 10:22 am
<script src=”http://www.barackobama.com/js/jQuery.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
January 14th, 2008 at 10:24 am
[...] you’re a web geek, you might find Robert Accettura’s article Secrets In Websites II a bit of a hoot. Never underestimate the power of the comment, especially when they’re left [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 11:34 am
[...] XML [Show Styled Code]: [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
A few comments:
Infrastructure/Platform: Microsoft
I’ve also been wondering about this, especially a few years ago… I never thought Windows sounded like a good choice for DNS’s. Now I know.
Myspace.com/strong>
I’ve noticed this before when I’ve been getting errors. I was surprised the first time I got an ASP.Net error on Myspace.
Global Crossing
Actually, Ethernet is not just twisted pair cables. Using a 10 GB optical link for ethernet is nothing terribly remarkable. Being network consultants I’m almost surprised they don’t have a wider pipe than that.
Also a comment on the list of presidential candidates. I think PHP doesn’t belong under Framework/Frontend, but rather Platform. It’s a small thing and it doesn’t really matter, but I took note of it.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Hmm, another comment not directly related the article.
I’m annoyed by some pages that promote non-IE browsers. Instead of positively checking if IE is used, and ocmplain if it is, they check for FF and complains (Shows a switch message) if it FF is not being used. For me as an Opera user that is annoying.
If you wonder, Opera stopped identifying itself as IE some years ago, so it’s not that. But when it happens, I can of course ues mask as FF, and all is fine.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:42 am
[...] web da parte dei vari candidati alle primarie negli Stati Uniti. Un’analisi interessante. Qui il post. PS: guardate anche la prima puntata della serie «Secrets in Websites», il link è [...]
January 15th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
[...] Secrets in websites, part two. [via Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage] [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I like the Firefox ones, there cool.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
[...] Secrets In Websites II | Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage (tags: webdesign cool programming) [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
[...] Secrets In Websites II | Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
What about on Wordpress’ comments template:
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
[...] Todos odian a IE - Que no te digan, que no te cuenten, usa Firefox o morirás de alguna enfermedad vinculada con tu falta de genialidad. Como ves acá, varias páginas tienen ataques al explorador de Microsoft en su código fuente, por si a alguien lo quedaba alguna duda de que NADIE quiere el IE. Fuente [...]
January 25th, 2008 at 2:01 am
[...] Secrets in websites: programmeurs met gevoel voor humor [...]
January 26th, 2008 at 12:38 am
I find myself doing the same thing with my code now as well. Putting funny things in knowing not many people will read them. Kinda like a ‘hello’ into the future.
- Dwayne Charrington.
http://www.dwaynecharrington.com
February 4th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Great observations!
February 4th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
[...] But if you are a web geek you will probably get a kick out of these stats, just like me. Check out Roberts page for the complete [...]
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:10 pm
DOTTED - http://www.newsdots.com/cool/s.....bsites-ii/
March 6th, 2008 at 1:24 am
Hey, no secrets hidden on your own site?
March 12th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I saw the little wordpress smilie on one of my blogs and couldn’t figure out what in the hell it was or where it came from … let alone how to move it. At least now I don’t think I’m quite as crazy
March 31st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
[...] comments in famous websites! You’ll laugh :)read more | digg story Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can [...]