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Topic: W3C website validation ... discussion (Read 1860 times)
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kerryb
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Posts: 8851
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Hi Downside
I agree we probably should all be aiming for your dizzy heights - W3C heights that is, but don't forget most of us amateurs, learning about web design as we go along and just getting our first site up and running is hard enough!!!
Kerry
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Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukSearching for my family - Baldwin - Sussex, Middlesex, Cork, Pilbeam - Sussex, Harmer - Sussex, Terry - Surrey, Kent, Rhoades - Lincs, Roffey - Surrey, Traies - Devon & Middlesex & many many more to be found on my website .... www.kerrysfamilyhistory.co.uk |
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julianb
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Portrait of the genealogist as a young man
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Hi Julian I'm on top of the world today because I managed to get all the pages on my website to conform to W3C s strict guidelines. I guess I should pick up my W3C conformance medal and put it on my site but knowing how quirky certain browsers can be, I don't think I'll bother.  I did scan quite a lot of RootsChat sites today and noticed all of them threw up errors (sometimes they went into 3 digits). It doesn't mean they do not work of course, but I suppose we should aspire to W3C conformance. Please discuss ............ downside
Sorry I forgot about your plea to discuss this - distracted by other things.
I think I may have misunderstood you.
When you said to wildfang ...
Do you realise that your website on RootsChat freespace is the only one to pass the W3C validation test and be error free?
I had assumed that you had checked all of the websites on RootsChat free webspace. This prompted me to offer you a medal (and question your sanity).
But then you said later on Wednesday
I did scan quite a lot of RootsChat sites today and noticed all of them threw up errors (sometimes they went into 3 digits).
Either you scanned all the others on a previous day, or you only scanned the ones you scanned on wednesday.
If it is the latter, I have to withdraw my offer of a medal and my questions about your sanity, on the basis that your congratulations to Wildfang may not have been strictly accurate - because wildfang (subject to "sorting" the RootsChat counter) might not actually be the only owner of a W3C compliant website on RootsChat webspace.
Anyway, I am delighted you've been able to get your site into a W3C compliant state. It's obviously important to you.
JULIAN
PS: 20 errors on W3C validation of my FH site home page - but I'm more concerned that it looks ok in different browsers. It does.
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« Last Edit: Saturday 13 January 07 07:47 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Essex - Carter, Danns, Mason, Middleditch, Pond, Poole, Rose, Sorrill, Surry, Theobold Kent - Luetchford Nottinghamshire - Baker, Dunks, Woodward, Price, Priestley Suffolk - Rose Surrey - Baker, Bedel, Bransden, Carter, Coleman, Gibbs, Luetchford, Quinton Sussex - Gibbs, Langridge Wiltshire - Brice, Rumble http://genbires.blogspot.com/http://genbires-networking.blogspot.com/Any census info in this post is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk |
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kerryb
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I noticed 23 on mine when I did the test however they mainly seemed to be to do with the html created by my software package, or at least those that I understood did.
Downside if web software package creators do not have a responsibility to make their packages W3C compliant why should we bother?
Kerry
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Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukSearching for my family - Baldwin - Sussex, Middlesex, Cork, Pilbeam - Sussex, Harmer - Sussex, Terry - Surrey, Kent, Rhoades - Lincs, Roffey - Surrey, Traies - Devon & Middlesex & many many more to be found on my website .... www.kerrysfamilyhistory.co.uk |
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Berlin-Bob
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by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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Just to add a few basics, for anybody who wants to join in:
Why should I validate my HTML pages? One of the important maxims of computer programming is: Be conservative in what you produce; be liberal in what you accept. Browsers follow the second half of this maxim by accepting Web pages and trying to display them even if they're not legal HTML. Usually this means that the browser will try to make educated guesses about what you probably meant. The problem is that different browsers (or even different versions of the same browser) will make different guesses about the same illegal construct; worse, if your HTML is really pathological, the browser could get hopelessly confused and produce a mangled mess, or even crash. That's why you want to follow the first half of the maxim by making sure your pages are legal HTML. The best way to do that is by running your documents through one or more HTML validators. A lengthier answer to this question is also available on this site if the explanation above did not satisfy you.
I've highlighted what I think is the most important point
the "lengthier answer" in the above link is also worth reading.
Bob
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
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if web software package creators do not have a responsibility to make their packages W3C compliant why should we bother?
If you only use software packages, then it's no big problem, as it will at least be consistent.
The problems arise, if the output from the software package looks different, in different browsers,
or, - and this is probably our most important concern - if we try to add bits to the package-produced pages.
Keith Bateman's topic: Why has the Rootschat footer become a header!!?
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,205249.0.html
is a prime example of this.
Bob
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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julianb
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Portrait of the genealogist as a young man
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Bob and others
You might be amused if you put Rootschat through the W3C validation checker 
JULIAN
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Essex - Carter, Danns, Mason, Middleditch, Pond, Poole, Rose, Sorrill, Surry, Theobold Kent - Luetchford Nottinghamshire - Baker, Dunks, Woodward, Price, Priestley Suffolk - Rose Surrey - Baker, Bedel, Bransden, Carter, Coleman, Gibbs, Luetchford, Quinton Sussex - Gibbs, Langridge Wiltshire - Brice, Rumble http://genbires.blogspot.com/http://genbires-networking.blogspot.com/Any census info in this post is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk |
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Gadget
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Gadget by Pels
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Julian put my home page through and got the grand total of 19 - all NOF generated.
I think we all try to achieve W3C standards in what we do - certainly I remember mentioning it on a thread many months ago, in relation to my personal bugbear, flashing gifs.
Surely, as well as attempting to achieve these standards, we should make sure that our websites are interesting and easy to read and provide relevant information and are easy to negotiate.
Purity of coding is one thing, the end product is what most people want to see and read.
Gadget
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kerryb
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Absolutely agree Gadget, I am not sure I fully understand this whole subject.
Oh I get that colour blind people should be able to read our text and we should't detract from our content by loads of flashing gifs. I also understand that different browsers have different effects on our wonderful creations meaning some people have to scroll horizontally or vertically more than others for instance.
However why do we have to go beyond that and worry about purity of coding if it doesn't affect anyone?
Kerry 
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Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukSearching for my family - Baldwin - Sussex, Middlesex, Cork, Pilbeam - Sussex, Harmer - Sussex, Terry - Surrey, Kent, Rhoades - Lincs, Roffey - Surrey, Traies - Devon & Middlesex & many many more to be found on my website .... www.kerrysfamilyhistory.co.uk |
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Gadget
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Gadget by Pels
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Absolutely, Kerry.
If it is a large website that is being devloped by a number of people then it is important that it conforms to an agreed standard and structured methods of coding (I won't bore you with my experiences of trying to unravel programs written inunstructured Cobol in the old days!)
However, I read somewhere that W3C standards have not actually been accepted by the 'industry' anyway. They are still being formulated and discussed.
Gadget
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Berlin-Bob
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The theory is, that in a perfect world, we all write (or have generated for us) perfect HTML code and every browser shows this code in exactly the same way.
so IF
we have w3c compliant code
AND
every browser is w3c compliant
THEN
our website looks the same in every browser
"What you see is what I gave you"
BUT
In the real world, each browser gives you different results, so we have to work against / around (?) this.
As Gadget says,
If it is a large website that is being devloped by a number of people then it is important that it conforms to an agreed standard and structured methods of coding Translated to our case:
We write a website, and then add code from other people (in my case: Legacy, GenoPro, phpGedView, kstableu, statcounter, RootsChat counter, e-mail form and guest book)
and this needs to "look right" in everybody's browsers.
However, I read somewhere that W3C standards have not actually been accepted by the 'industry' anyway. They are still being formulated and discussed.
I feel the "best thing" we can do (if this is an issue for us) is to try for w3c compliance, such as it is,
and still keep testing in as many browsers as possible
Bob
ps I've spent 35 years working with so-called industry standards, which are usually used in a "more or less compliant" way, or else in a "only the name is the same" way
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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kerryb
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Perhaps that's because Firefox is better at not always making assumptions!!!!
Kerry
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Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukSearching for my family - Baldwin - Sussex, Middlesex, Cork, Pilbeam - Sussex, Harmer - Sussex, Terry - Surrey, Kent, Rhoades - Lincs, Roffey - Surrey, Traies - Devon & Middlesex & many many more to be found on my website .... www.kerrysfamilyhistory.co.uk |
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gbaynes
RootsChat Member
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The first line of an HTML file should be the doctype
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
or something similar
I say it should be but in fact it doesn't have to be there at all.
It's only purpose is to tell the validator to which standard you have written your html code.
The validator merely checks to see whether you are telling the truth. And then points out all those areas where you have erred.
Some browsers also take note of the doctype but I think this is more for the error flagging than for the interpretation of the code.
deprecated code - I don't know of any browser which has stopped decoding any deprecated elements. But they have been deprecated for a reason and you should think how you will replace them for the future.
There are also things in the specifications which derive from the accessibility rules, like each graphic has to have an alt="" parameter.
In all the times I have used a validator, I have never found it to be unworthwhile. Missing /div , invalid parameter , whatever the error, it is worth it to chase down each one and fix it.
The validator makes it so easy, showing you where each fault is.
George
You cannot rely on IE to fix all your mistakes for ever.
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