HTML Validator Recommendations

I like much about the update, but there are a few opinions I have, so I'll
share them here:

1. I don't think it's necessary to separate the "advanced" validation page.
They were fine on the main page, and I see no purpose in setting them apart.
The same goes for the results.  As far as I can tell the differences are so
slight that they might as well be recombined.

2. One of the new suggestions for errors sometimes isn't as helpful as the
older ones.  A common old error for the website I maintain used to be "check
for improper embedding or ...etc."  Given the same error it no longer
suggests improper embedding.  I think it'd be real helpful to reintroduce
this.

3. When reprinting the errors themselves--well, are these shorter than they
used to be?  Or am I imagining this?  I *feel* like I remember the old
validator always printed a tag in its entirety.  If this was the case, I
also say that this format be brought back.  I recognize the desire to make
things "cleaner" by shortening them, but in long documents it's VERY helpful
to have the tag printed with the error too.  The little red "^" symbol makes
it all too clear where the error is located within a tag, so I wouldn't
worry if things look "longer" than they should in that case.

4. This one's a little more blurry of an issue with me.  Macromedia FlashMX
has an autopublish feature.  If one takes JUST the code for the flash itself
(not the rest of the code flash generates for the html document) and use it
in a web page, nearly every tag in the Flash code gets errors.  Particularly
guilty are all the <param> attributes and the <embed> attribute (recommended
for making flash viewable on Netscape).  Any solutions?  Is there a "proper"
way to embed flash movies on a webpage?

5.  I like the Error count.  Useful for knowing degrees of unclean code.  I
think the whole thing validates faster, too, which is a big plus.


That's all!  I'm not part of this list, so if anybody has any comments or
answers to my questions, please e-mail me at azgul@wam.umd.edu.  Thank you
very much!



-- Tony
azgul@wam.umd.edu

Received on Tuesday, 3 December 2002 15:09:30 UTC