RE: CSS Validator Alteration

Alex,

I'm just another subscriber to this list, like yourself, but I do agree with the design of the validator. It validates standard CSS, not the whims of the vendors. 

Since vendor extensions are the vendors' non-standard ways of either adding their own enhancements or of providing an alternative way to achieve a style other than the standard way, they are not standard and therefore not appropriate to be marked as such. It took a while to convince the validator team to do so, but they have at least now marked the vendor extensions as warnings rather than errors as long as the proper vendor extension is used. I think that makes a lot of sense and I'm glad they finally did that. But beyond that, they cannot mark a particular vendor extension as valid. Only the vendor can do that. The vendor may add new extensions or remove current ones at the vendor's whim. The W3C has no control over what a vendor might do. It can only list what is a standard and validate against it.

Personally I don't see why this is a problem. If you need a site that validates, create it to do so, test it, and once you're satisfied, add the vendor extensions in a separate style sheet. If you're working for a company or a governmental entity that doesn't understand that vendor extensions are by definition not standard and therefore cannot validate to the standards using the validator, then don't attach the extensions style sheet. 

When I validate my CSS, after I get the results I go through it and make my own decision as to how to handle the exceptions -- to either correct them if they're in error, to rework them to not produce an error, or to leave them as such because they work even if they're not a part of the standard.

--Doug 

Douglas Perreault CPA* CITP
*CPA designation is regulated by the State of Florida


-----Original Message-----
From: www-validator-css-request@w3.org [mailto:www-validator-css-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alex Ross
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 7:20 PM
To: www-validator-css@w3.org
Subject: CSS Validator Alteration

Hi, I'm Alex Ross and I've found it quite irritating when it comes to vendor specs that don't validate, even with vendor extensions declared as warnings only.

A prime example is the attached CSS file: screen.css (2082 bytes) as mime-type text/css

The validator declares any MSIE gradients as errors and also gives warnings about -moz-*, -khtml-*, -webkit-*, and -ms-*

I like to cater to all web browsers (I don't support IE < 7) and I follow all the latest web standards and initiatives provided by both the web developing community and by the vendors.

I would like to assist in any way I can towards keeping the W3C Jigsaw CSS Validator up to date on all initiatives and web standards.

Received on Wednesday, 8 June 2011 00:24:38 UTC