Re: im puzzled

On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Ronnie Goswami wrote:

> i though "frameborder" was an attribute of <frameset> tags...  it
> says so in my book....  why will the validator still give me an
> error?  and another thing...  my server, http://www.geocities.com
> inserts a javascript "watermark" that generates another 2 errors
> and they're not even my fault... how do i over come these errors? 
> thanks for your time.  any help would greatly be appreciated...
> thank you,

I refer you to the HTML 4.0 specification for details, see:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/present/frames.html

for information on frames. The W3C validator can check you
html using different DTDs - the strict DTD for 4.0 and
the looser one which includes frames. You can see how to
get the right one using the info at the top of the page at:

    http://validator.w3.org/

I checked the geocities home page with my HTML tidy utility
(available via my home page) and saw the following errors:

Parsing "geocities.html"
line 16 column 1 - Warning: <AREA> lacks "alt" attribute
line 17 column 1 - Warning: <AREA> lacks "alt" attribute
line 18 column 1 - Warning: <AREA> lacks "alt" attribute
line 19 column 1 - Warning: <AREA> lacks "alt" attribute
line 25 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 27 column 1 - Warning: missing </FONT> before <SCRIPT>
line 27 column 1 - Warning: trimming empty <FONT>
line 41 column 1 - Warning: inserting implicit <FONT>
line 41 column 85 - Warning: <IMG> lacks "alt" attribute
line 44 column 16 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 45 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 59 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 74 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 238 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 245 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 265 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 266 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 271 column 1 - Warning: discarding unexpected </FONT>
line 276 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 278 column 1 - Warning: <TABLE> lacks "summary" attribute
line 296 column 1 - Warning: missing </TABLE>
line 296 column 1 - Warning: missing </TABLE>

Tidy is somewhat more forgiving than the validator and doesn't
complain about the missing type attribute for script. The HTML
working group couldn't reach a concensus that the language attribute
as an acceptable alternative to type.  Geocities are using image
maps that are inaccessable to people with non-visual browsers or who
cannot see the images. They do provide text menus but only at the
bottom of the page. They use tables for visual layout in a way that
creates accessibility problems. The missing summary attribute should
be used to describe the structure of the table. Geocities is also
rather lax about its use of font elements. 

Regards,

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
phone: +44 122 578 2984 (or 2521) +44 385 320 444 (gsm mobile)
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Wednesday, 1 July 1998 07:39:07 UTC