accessible forum software

[llama]

Hi,

Does anybody have an opinion over which of the many PHP-based forum applications is the most accessible?

cheers

Stephen

[Jona]

I can't be exact, but I've seen a lot of hints in the source code (not PHP source, HTML source) of PHPBB that demonstrate they at least know HTML. PHPBB is also the forum software used at AccessifyForum.com which is the forum for the Accessify site.

[the tree]

We can only hope for a completley CSS based forum, no tables and 100% accessable.

[Jona]

Originally posted by the tree
We can only hope for a completley CSS based forum, no tables and 100% accessable.

A forum should have tables. If there are no tables, the forum is not accessible.

[MstrBob]

Yes, actually, Forums are a great example of tabular data used on the web. They are most appropriately marked up as tables for the different forums and threads.

[Ben Rogers]

Forums would be the best example of a place where CSS and tables will work beautfully together. Imagine how much repetitive presentational markup there is in forums- that could all be replaced with a few classes and IDs. All the table markup would be the caption (that thread's name) the colgroup (info and post), then the tbody, which would be like

<tr id="post00001"><td><h4>Poster</h4>
<img src="/avatar.php?user=poster" alt="" height="50" width="50" />
<dl>
  <dt>Registered</dt><dd>November 2004</dd>
  <dt>Location</dt><dd>Timbuctu</dd>
  <dt>Post count</dt><dd>8167</dd>
</dl>
Posted at 11-21-04, 3:06pm</td>
<td>This is my post, I like <em>cheese</em>, and <em class="blu">the colour blue</em>.<hr />&raquo;
 - Poster, <a href="http://ww.example.com/">my site</a>.
<div>  <ul class="actions">
    <li><img src="/forum/images/off.gif" alt="Poster is offline" /> | 
    <li><a href="member.php?act=getinfo&amp;user=poster"><img src="/forum/images/profile.gif"&raquo;
 alt="Click Here to See the Profile for the tree" /></a></li>
    <li><a href="private.php?act=newmessage&amp;user=poster"><img src="/forum/images/sendpm.gif"&raquo;
 alt="Click here to Send the tree a Private Message" /></a></li>
    <li><a href="http://www.example.com/"><img src="/forum/images/home.gif"&raquo;
 alt="Visit poster's homepage!" border="0"></a></li>
    <li><a href="search.php?act=finduser&amp;user=poster"><img src="/forum/images/find.gif"&raquo;
 alt="Find more posts by Poster></a></li>
    <li><a href="member2.php?act=addlist&amp;userlist=buddy&amp;user=poster">&raquo;
<img src="/forum/images/buddy.gif" alt="Add poster to your buddy list"></a></li>
  </ul>
  <ul class="reply">
    <li><a href="editpost.php?act=editpost&amp;postid=277769"><img src="/forum/images/edit.gif"&raquo;
 alt="Edit/Delete Message"></a></li>
    <li><a href="newreply.php?act=newreply&amp;postid=277769"><img src="/forum/images/quote.gif"&raquo;
 alt="Reply w/Quote"></a></li>
  </ul></div></td></tr>
<tr>

Instead of... well, view source on these forums.

[llama]

Thanks for your comments.

Looking at phpBB, it seems I should be able to find a way of using the templating system to create a clean XHTML based version.

[Jona]

Good luck!

[Ben Rogers]

Originally posted by Jona
Good luck!

Ditto. Hope you get things up'n'running nice and smooth.