- From: David Dorward <david@dorward.me.uk>
- Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 14:05:14 +0000
- To: ceo@alierra.com
- Cc: www-validator-css@w3.org, www-validator@w3.org
(NB: Since this thread is about the Markup Validation Service and not the CSS Validation Service, I've CCed this to the www-validator@w3.org list and set the Reply-To header to the same.) On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 03:40:39PM +0200, ceo@alierra.com wrote: > 1. On the very front page of your respected http://validator.w3.org you > should mention that the program is not bug-free. Otherwise, the > absence of this message makes people believe that validator is a > reliable program. No software is bug free, but the Markup Validation service is a reliable program. It rarely gets things wrong - certainly not (IMO) sufficiently often enough to display a "Don't trust me!" message. > 2. Have http://www.msn.com, http://www.google.com, or http://www.ebay.com > typed into the address area. How will you comment their error report? > I will doubt that MSN, Google, or Ebay corporations hire the worst > html-coders. Browsers have hefty error correction routines in their markup parsers. This leads to websites authors writing sloppy code. Large companies are not commonly exceptions. > 3. I had my own site http://www.alierra.com "validatored". I particularly > liked the following mistake: > > Line 11, column 6: end tag for element "HEAD" which is not open > > </HEAD> > > However, line 2 has the following tag <HEAD>. > > How will you comment this? Since you have no Doctype (hint: Fix the first error first, it can have consequences on later errors), the validator assumes you are using HTML 4.01 Transitional. In HTML 4.01 Transitional the end tag for <head> is optional, as is the start tag for <body>. In your <head> section you have <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />, using XHTML style self-closing tags in HTML is a mistake. Under HTML rules <foo /> means the same as <foo>> or <foo>>. Since character data (such as a greater than sign) is now allowed in the <head> section, but it is allowed in the <body> section this implies that you close the <head> section and open the <body> section immediately before the > sign. So your code reads the same as: <head> <title>Alierra Custom Website Design Company - Professional Design and Consulting Services</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" > </head> <body> > <link href="img/styles.css" type="text/css" rel=stylesheet> So this is your mistake, not the validators. If you had enabled the "Show Parse Tree" option of the Validator, it would have shown you this. > 4. I believe every site, which is a more or less complicated, will have > at least 30 mistakes within the Validator. Well then, lets pick some sites. A few W3C sites, a few by people I know, and a bug bunch picked out of the list of Blogs I fetch the RSS feeds from: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdorward.me.uk%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fw3.org%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fgreytower.net%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Foffog.org%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fvalidator.w3.org%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwebstandards.org%2Fbuzz%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=%28detect+automatically%29 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsimon.incutio.com%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fphotomatt.net%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fphotostack.org%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fweblog.delacour.net%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fln.hixie.ch%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.benhammersley.com%2F http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.benmeadowcroft.com%2F and so on. > I was just merely saying that inexperienced users firmly believe in > Validator and they require their sites to be in conformity with its rules. > Whereas, the users do not understand that the rules are not perfect. It is true that the rules are not perfect, however there is very rarely a good reason to break them[1], and the Markup Validation Service rarely makes a mistake when checking if a document follows them. [1] I'm being liberal when I say that; I've never found a good reason to break them. -- David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk
Received on Friday, 28 January 2005 14:05:22 UTC