Hi Karsten, thanks for the feedback.

I've updated the copy on my webserver (http://tucker.wales/tor/exonerator/) to clean up the markup a little (I rushed the previous version out at 3AM). I've also improved readibility by using indentation, as is now generally accepted in web development.


> Maybe we could also add some information about the expected IP and
> date formats in the whitespace, too.

Let's talk about that.  I'm also not sure if putting examples into the
two input text boxes is such a good idea.  I heard that it can confuse
people by thinking there's already an IP address entered, so why would
they have to put in another one, which is even more problematic on
browsers with date selector.  It also hides the fact that ExoneraTor
supports searches by IPv6 addresses.  Maybe we can put in different
placeholders and add some good explanations below the form.  I still
think that less is more with respect to text length, but if we can
come up with some smart text there, that might do it.

I think we could accomplish a good way of providing that information - let me have a little play around over the next few days/week and I'll try to propose a good solution.


So, here's the diff with my questions:

@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
 <title>ExoneraTor</title>
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/bootstrap.min.css">
+<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/styles.css">
 <link href="images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" rel="icon">
 </head>
 <body>

Is it good practice to use a custom .css file in combination with
Bootstrap, or should we try to only use Bootstrap's classes,
properties, etc. to come up with the approximate design that we want?
 Or, would it be possible to stick with Bootstrap-only styles for now
until there's no other way than using our own style file to do the
thing we want?

It's completely good practice to use custom css styles/files alongside Bootstrap. It's the only real way to add custom styling to the page and this method of creating a "sticky footer" is actually suggested in the Bootstrap examples.
 


@@ -17,10 +18,15 @@
 </div><!-- page-header -->
 </div><!-- col -->
 </div><!-- row -->
- -
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-xs-12">
 <div class="text-center">
+<div class="row vbottom15">
+<div class="col-xs-12">
+<h4>Enter the details of the relay that you would like to check
below:</h4>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="row"></div>
 <form class="form-inline">
 <div class="form-group">
 <label for="inputIp" class="control-label">IP address</label>

What's the purpose of that last row there that doesn't come with any
columns?

I've removed that in the new version, it wasn't meant to be there.
 


@@ -35,6 +41,9 @@
 </div><!-- text-center -->
 </div><!-- col -->
 </div><!-- row -->
+</div><!-- container -->
+<footer>
+<div class="container">
 <div class="row">
 <div class="col-xs-6">
 <h3>About Tor</h3>

I guess the <footer> is what moves the footer to the bottom, together
with our styles.css, right?  Is that a common HTML thing, a
Bootstrap-specific thing, a custom tag that only works with our
styles.css, or how does this work?  Is this the most Bootstrap-y way
to do it?  (As you notice, I'm trying to stick to the defaults as long
as possible.)

Correct - the margin added to the bottom of the body, along with the position and height CSS attributes of <footer>, is what moves the footer to the bottom of the page.

The <footer> tag is HTML5, so it won't work on older browsers - because of this, I've changed the markup to use div.footer in the updated version instead of a <footer> tag. This ensures compatibility with older, non-HTML5 browsers.
 


@@ -54,7 +63,9 @@
 <p class="text-center small">"Tor" and the "Onion Logo" are <a
href="https://www.torproject.org/docs/trademark-faq.html.en">registered
trademarks</a>
of The Tor Project, Inc.</p>
 </div><!-- col -->
 </div><!-- row -->
- -</div><!-- container -->
+</div>
+</footer>
 </body>
 </html>

Makes sense.  By the way, is it good practice to add these comments,
or is that just something that old people do who first learned HTML in
the late 90's and whose favorite HTML editor is vim?

It's up to the author, to be honest - it can't hurt to keep them there, I would agree that it helps greatly to improve readibility (especially when using a lot of divs).

Thanks,

Joshua Lee Tucker
@tuckerwales