Next message: Bjoern Hoehrmann: "Re: Suggestion: "allow extra attributes" flag"
From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
To: Bryce Nesbitt <bryce@obviously.com>
Cc: Christian Smith <csmith@barebones.com>, www-validator@w3.org
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 21:25:01 +0200
Message-ID: <i98jmt8mmga5crni7oo043vmih344j6v39@4ax.com>
Subject: Re: Suggestion: Check elment first, attribute second
* Bryce Nesbitt wrote:
>The w3c validator is basically useless for validating pages that dynamically generate
>HTML with JavaScript. While I don't expect the validator to understand JavaScript,
>it could at least be silent about the supposed syntax violations.
They aren't _supposed_ violations, they are _real_ syntax violations.
>The people
>who designed JavaScript may have been idiots, and may have horribly polluted
>the SGML syntax, but now we have to live with it.
'<' + '/' + Letter is recognized inside the elements 'script' and
'style' and they terminate those elements. Just take care that you
scripts don't include this combination literally and you won't have
any problem.
>I've had problems with half a dozen web designers, getting them to use the
>validator.
Tell them to use HTML Tidy. It will fix most errors for them, and Tidy
will be far stricter than the Validator in the upcoming release, i.e. it
checks far more things the Validator currently can't check, especially
attribute values. Additionally Tidy understands proprietary markup to
some extend.
>They all complain that it complains about non-issues.
Yeah, I know. I had this problem in the german web authoring community
for years, some people even refered to the Validator as "Valigator"...
but now those people see their pages break in NN6 or Opera5 and people
who understand the need of adherance to standards advertise it's use and
most people refuse to care about problems if the given markup doesn't
pass HTML Validation. People explore the benefits of Valid HTML, they
even note that writing valid pages is far easier then writing invalid
pages, they are easier to maintain, are smaller and more accessible.
I'm very happy with this evolution, not only because I got flamed
dozens of times when I tried to explain that valid HTML is necessary.
It needs education and tools that help them to fix errors and in the
best case, popular browsers that show them, how their invalid pages
fail. While I have no influence on the latter, I'm working for the other
two items, eductation and supporting tools. That's what we need, not a
Validator that doesn't validate pages.
>Which does better for the standards community:
> o A strict validator that many people won't run.
> -or-
> o A lose validator that's more practical to use for real websites,
> but also less strict.
There are other online checkers that may be more helpful to them, tell
them to use them. The validator _must_ validate, otherwise it would
become useless for _all_ people.
--
Björn Höhrmann { mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de } http://www.bjoernsworld.de
am Badedeich 7 } Telefon: +49(0)4667/981028 { http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
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