Re: value of attribute "ID" invalid: "_" cannot start a name

On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 06:50:52PM -0600, Phil Hadley wrote:
>    I'm finding a potential problem with the HTML Validator.

>    All my ASP.NET (.aspx) pages fail to validate with the following
>    error:
>                value of attribute "ID" invalid: "_" cannot start a name

Which is correct ...
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#type-name
... so the problem is with your ASP.NET, not the validator.

>    However, I have no control over this element on the page because
>    it is dynamically generated by ASP.NET.  

Then you should take up the matter with whomever is responsible for
your ASP.NET code.

>    Surely MS wouldn't generate HTML pages that fail to validate...??

Err...

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2F

Microsoft has had a reputation for producing software that outputs
some of the worst markup on the market for some time. One of the big
selling points of one of the more recent versions of Frontpage was
that it produced valid markup ... and the advert had syntax errors in
the picture of HTML!

>    Interesting note: Even though these pages don't validate, they are crawled
>    and searchable on Google.

There is lots of broken markup on the WWW, user agents usually come
with large amounts of error correction. Depending on error correction
is a very bad idea though (since it isn't implemented consistently or
to a standard).

-- 
David Dorward                                      http://dorward.me.uk

Received on Sunday, 17 September 2006 00:02:33 UTC