Quick idea: w3 non-validation of 3rd party sections

I am working very hard on one of my sites to have a 100% valid xhtml 
page.

My big problem is with vendor's code. For example, if I want to add 
Google AdSense, it will add <img SRC tags that trips out the validator. 
Another example, if I want to use webrings service, it adds up a long 
and nasty >1.4K line of code I must copy-paste to my page. Again, there 
are many tags that will never validate.

These are 100% not under my control and other than complaining to the 
vendor saying I should be able to get proper encoding for my doctype, 
there is nothing I can really do. I can't change the code because it 
would break my contract.

This is not covered in the FAQ nor docs.


What I propose is to have a tag I could use for W3C validator that 
would ask it to totally skip a section, with a reason.

For example:

<body>
<h1>My part</h1>
<!--VALIDATOR:Skip; Reason: Google AdSense Code-->
.... snip ...
<!--VALIDATOR:Resume-->
<h1>My 2nd part</h1>
</body>

.... this would entirely skip that part of code as if it wasn't existing 
and it wouldn't fail my page. However, it would add a "Warning" flag 
saying this section was skipped along with the reason and lines 
skipped.

Philosophically, I am against that idea too because the validation is 
all white or black, it works or not, it follows standard or not ... and 
it gives place to abuse. But then I haven't found a way to solve my 
problem, "removing code", "putting it in a separate page", "complaining 
to vendor", "changing code" are not my cup of tea.

Any thoughts?
Thanks
Mike

Received on Saturday, 31 July 2004 17:16:46 UTC