Re: [VE][108] Flash embed

On 24/4/09 03:01, Jeremy Lupoli wrote:
> Validating http://www.mayorsforkids.org/
> Error [108]: "there is no attribute X"
>
> I find it highly unusual that it won't validate Flash embedding.
> Unfortunately,<embed>  is still required by many browsers.  Their
> answer, to use SATAY (http://validator.w3.org/docs/help.html#faq-flash AND http://alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay) is
> pretty ridiculous, especially if you're only grabbing a YouTube or
> user-created content (so that you can't edit the Flash file itself).
> This should be relegated to a warning, not an error.  Many pages will
> be unable to be validated otherwise.

HTML 4.01 conformance includes validating to one of the HTML 4.01 SGML 
DTDs. Your document claims to conform to the 
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd. It doesn't. The error message 
correctly reflects the fact.

That decade-old DTD and the wider criteria of HTML 4.01 conformance are 
never going to be modified to add features rather than fix errata.

Of course, just because you're not conforming doesn't mean you've made a 
mistake. In this, you're making a deliberate decision not to conform.

Perhaps you should pick a conformance target that includes the features 
you want. If there isn't such a conformance target, that's not a problem 
with the validator; go lobby the people creating conformance targets 
(i.e. the HTML WG and XHTML 2 WG).

As it happens, the current draft of HTML 5 includes the "embed" element:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-embed-element

and the validator has experimental support for checking HTML 5. Be 
warned that unlike HTML 4.01, as a draft HTML 5 is a non-stable 
conformance target - just because your document conforms today, doesn't 
mean it will conform tomorrow.

If you want to conform to HTML 4.01 with known exceptions (e.g. adding 
an element or attribute here and there), set up a linting process that 
checks that.

For example, you could download the validator and make it use a custom 
DTD that includes "embed" when checking your HTML. Or you could simply 
take the validator output and make a script to strip out errors relating 
to your use of "embed".

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Received on Saturday, 25 April 2009 14:23:48 UTC