Re: Ampersands + "Last modified:" Malfunctions

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan C. Baird" <ia@apc.net>
To: <www-validator@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2000 6:39 PM
Subject: Ampersands + "Last modified:" Malfunctions


| > To avoid problems with both validators and browsers, always use
| > &amp; in place of &:
| >
| > <a href="foo.cgi?chapter=1&amp;section=2">...</a>
|
| However, many CGI engines will not accept &amp;

They won't have to. The browser will expand &amp; and send the URL to
the CGI engine as &, not &amp;.

| - and rather than
| forcing all those webmasters out there to stop programming in the
| commonly-accepted fashion, why not change the validator to accept
| ampersands, when they're embedded in anchor tags?

Because it's illegal according to HTML. Actually, if browsers were as
strict as they *should* be, the links would not *work* if you just used
& and not &amp;! So if you use &, you will risk your pages not working
in some browsers. If you use &amp;, your pages will work in all
browsers[1] (and CGIs).

[1] Except an older version of Amaya and some obscure, old Mac browser.

-- 
Karl Ove Hufthammer

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 15:53:31 UTC