Validator and Javascript

I hope this is the proper mailing list for this question.

My question is this, if I have an HTML page with lots of deprecated
tags (ie. like <embed>) and I hide those tags in an external javascript,
I can trick the validator into saying that I have an HTML 4.01  
Strict. Can I realistically claim that my page is HTML Strict?

As far as the browser is concerned, it executes the javascript, which  
tells it to write those deprecated tags to the page, and then the  
browser executes those deprecated tags. Is this not cheating?

You are all familiar with the Microsoft-Eolas issues. A workaround  
suggested by many sites is to use Javascript. Now, many of those  
folks using this javascript workaraound are claiming that their pages  
are XHTML/HTML Strict  etc... even though their javascript is writing  
deprecated tags to the page.

I mean, what REALLY is the point of having a W3C validator in the  
first place then? If I have a browser that looks at the doctype of a  
page, and then strictly enforces that doctype when it renders all of  
the tags (including those from javascript), then the page would not  
render properly. Of course, todays browsers are more forgiving than  
that, but that's really not the point.

Isn't this just cheating?

Eric Gerds

Received on Tuesday, 2 May 2006 21:44:42 UTC