Re: proper use of validation icons

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Michael A. Peters wrote:
> 
>> http://www.shastaherps.org/
>>
>> click the valid button (left navigation menu).
>> See it vsalidate as xhtml 1.1 (the validator always gets xhtml even if
>> your browser gets the html version)
> 
> Testing this on IE 8, I see an icon claiming HTML 4.01 validity. 
> Clicking on the icon I get the response
> "This document was successfully checked as XHTML 1.1!"
> Do I need to say more?

The pages are built with php DOMDocument.

$doc->saveXML() produces x(ht)ml
$doc->saveHTML() produces html

I look at $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT']

If it is not set or does not contain application/xhtml+xml then I send 
an html 4.01 page. Internet Explorer does not send a header stating it 
knows what to do with application/xhtml+xml, therefore it gets the html 
4.01 version of the page.

The W3C validator however gets the xhtml 1.1 version of the page.
View source, copy source, and validate by direct input - it will 
validate html 4.01 strict. I do not use ruby tags (afaik the only part 
of xhtml not in html 4) and I'm currently only setting the custom 
attribute for my search engine in the xhtml version of the page.

> 
> Oh well, lets check on Firefox as well. Now I see a claim on XHTML 1.1 
> validity, and clicking on it I get the same response as above. Yet the 
> document is not an XHTML 1.1 document, as it has a different document 
> type definition.

So in your opinion it is a bug with the validator.

I suppose it should be filed then, and I should probably just use 
generic non w3c badges - maybe even the same badge for html and xhtml 
that simply says "Allegedly valid web content" ;)

Received on Monday, 8 June 2009 07:00:26 UTC