Re: W3C Markup Validation Problem

Sean Webster wrote:

> We are having a problem when using the W3C Markup Validation Service,

David Dorward already described the basic problem: your server sends 
different data to different user agents.

For example, IE gets a version containing an <input type="image" ...> 
element with the attribute style="border-width:0px;" whereas Lynx (as 
well as the validator) gets a slightly different version where that 
element has instead the attribute border="0", which makes the markup 
invalid (since that attribute is not allowed in <input> in the DTD 
specified, or in any official HTML DTD for that matter - it's a 
Netscapism, introduced to deal with the issue that Netscape drew a 
border around an image submit button by default). Probably the server 
tries to send "modern" responses to "modern" browsers, by some 
classification, and old-style markup to "old" browsers. The validator 
does not claim to be a browser at all, and the server probably 
classifies it thus as "old".

> When clicking on the W3C Xhtml 1.0 validation button on our website
> (bottom right corner):
> http://www.cccs.co.uk/accessibility/accessibility.aspx
>
> The Validation Service produces 1 Failed Validation error when looking
> at the address: http://www.cccs.co.uk/

That's rather strange. Normally a "validation button" (icon) is used as 
a link to validation of the page itself, not some other page, so this is 
even more confusing than validation icons in general (see 
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/validation.html#icon for an 
explanation of why they are worse than useless - and they are 
particularly hostile to accessibility).

Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Wednesday, 14 May 2008 20:23:26 UTC