Incomplete URI in DOCTYPE HTML 4.01 Transitional Validates ?

Hi,

I would like to to know why does the w3c validator validate a website as 
being 100% compliant if it has a missing or invalid URI ?

I have found that whether a website has or does not have a valid URI it 
still validates i noticed this for HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPES i 
have not tried others.

We all know that if there is an invalid or missing URI it will put IE 
browsers in QuirksMode which means that not all code will work correctly 
like i have found with some Csscode i used in one of my recent projects. 
Because of this shouldnt w3c validator NOT make a site 100% compliant i 
know that for the most part if you had a missing or invalid URI such as 
the following

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

Most browsers will still work and even IE will work to come extent but 
depending on the code used will it depend on the unexpected results.

By adding the URI eg

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

This resolves the issues in IE browsers as it wont put the browser in 
QuirksMode and therefor display the page correctly.

For this reason i will argue that the w3c validator should not make a 
site 100% compatible and at the very least give a WARNING about the 
possibility of a page not rendering properly if there is a missing or 
invalid URI.

Please let me know your thoughts are some explanation to this theory ?

Thanks.

Received on Thursday, 17 September 2009 23:52:00 UTC