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web wiz apps don’ validate DTD

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URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=999
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Topic: web wiz apps don’ validate DTD

Posted By: royland
Subject: web wiz apps don’ validate DTD
Date Posted: 13 March 2003 at 4:17pm

Hi Borg,

I ran your apps through the mandatory w3org DTD validator for compliant mark up and found your pages do not validate.

Do you plan to get your pages conformant with the validator at:

http://validator.w3.org/ - http://validator.w3.org/

This is considered a necessary exercise for todays web designers.

ps: I am a big fan of your applications

Best regards

Jason

Replies:

Posted By: sandy771
Date Posted: 13 March 2003 at 4:37pm

My site is generated by the latest MS frontpage and it doesn't validate. Who actually considers this necessary? I would think that the majority of sites fail.

Posted By: MadDog
Date Posted: 13 March 2003 at 5:09pm

royland wrote:

This is considered a necessary exercise for todays web designers.

A necessay?? Ive never even heard of it....

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 14 March 2003 at 3:08am

I'm afraid I design pages for web browsers, what works in one web browser doesn't always work in another and the only way to comprimise and get it to run in both is to use HTML which isn't necessarily complient with w3 DTD.

All the appliactions are tested and made to run in:-

IE 4,5,and 6
Netscape 4.x, 6, and 7
Opera 5,6, and 7
Mozilla 1

Also to make things like the forum easier to customise things like image width and height are left out, this is not complient with w3 DTD, but dose allow people to customise the forum easier as they simply replace the image with their own. If the image height and width were included you would then need to edit each page thye image is shown on.

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Posted By: pedalcars
Date Posted: 14 March 2003 at 4:00am

Going to chuck in my fifty cents (cue poor joke about being in da club)...

I have to back Royland up; if you're building for the web you really ought to produce valid html, which includes a document type definition (DTD). It is possible to find one (sometimes a compromise one) that works in all browsers (well, all properly-written browsers at least!).

That said, I also go with -boRg-'s position regarding the image sizes - it's the price of producing a flexible application that can be customised by its many thousands of users without them making it look rubbish (which wouldn't help -boRg-'s reputation any).

However, image size definition is NOT required for valid HTML (certainly not in html 4.01; don't know about XML); I can prove this having recently successfully validated a page with an image of undefined size.

Sandy771, no surprise really in your statement - the reason being those two letters, "MS"! Micros**t being who and how they are, Frontpage has a nasty habit of inserting unhelpful and unneccessary tags into your code, or worse still sticking proprietary bits of cack into it, which often mean your site will ONLY be viewable using Inferiornet Explorer. It is possible to produce valid html using FP, but you need to take more control of the code - and if you do, you can even use it to write asp pages that work and produce valid html. The new pedalcars.info site (when it goes live) will be proof of this.

Finally, if you're pretending to be a web site designer and don't even *know* about the W3C, or the concept of valid HTML, then shame on you in a big way!

PS. Love the additional emoticons!

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http://www.pedalcars.info/ - www.pedalcars.info

The most fun on four wheels

Posted By: bobski
Date Posted: 14 March 2003 at 8:06am

I think what Borg stated makes most sence. His pages are compatible with netscape, IE, Opera and mozilla.

That means his scripts are compatible with 99% of all browsers.

So why worry 'bout the dtd, just for the principle of it? I can only see disadvantages, mainly because W3org is behind on new expectations.

bob

Magician, you do a hell of a job!

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It's hip to be square!

Posted By: royland
Date Posted: 14 March 2003 at 8:36am

Hi Borg,

I see your point re: image size and width but I'm sure there must be a way around this.

I too did not know anything about w3 dtd requirements until I submitted my site to a web design form for site critique. Some of the best designers around slammed me for not getting my pages to validate.

Apparently this will have consequences in coming years as XHMTL takes over and other sites attempt to interact with yours. Also, future browsers may break if you do not have valid DTD and encoding.

I actually then went ahead and cleaned up the code and it actually helped my pages and made them more browser friendly. I felt better about it afterwards. This is one of the critiques I got which hurt at first but pulled me right:

-------------------------

Yes. :) There may be other impressions, but if the site doesn't

validate, then the CSS probably doesn't work as expected, and any

Javascript will also have problems, due to the lack of a properly formed

DOM parse tree. If we /do/ find problems with the site (as opposed to

fuzzy impressions of the /visual/ design, which is only one part) if the

site isn't valid, it isn't worth our time to try to figure out why or

how the poster could fix them.

> If, after doing this and seeing it fail, do we completely dismiss the site

> as not worthy of our attention?

Until such a time as the site becomes valid, yeah. Like I said, it's not

worth our time to dig deeper if they haven't taken the time to make the

site using valid markup and/or CSS. Once they've gone back and fixed the

site, then yeah, any feedback is appropriate. Until then, though, there's

simply no sense feeding back because we have no idea whether we're seeing

the site as the designer intended, and so can't really give useful critique.

> Does this list (and the greater community) now hold validation on a pedestal

> higher then other concerns of our profession (as Jason asks 'look, feel and

> functionality' and I'd add adaptability, accessibility & page weight)

No, not a pedestal at all. A foundation.

I guess we'd better settle this, eh? A house divided cannot stand, and

all that.

Validation, the use of CSS, the attempt at a table-free layout, and

other things are what signals to us that the designer/developer has done

their homework, that they have endeavored to produce a site that will

work on any browser, that any bugs that crop up may well be bugs in the

/browser/ we're using rather than in the site itself. Without that good

faith effort, chasing down bugs in a ill-founded site is a waste of our

time and the designers' time, because the site stands on no solid

ground.

Sure, we can give visual design critiques. If the designer just says

"hey, how do you like this design?" they may as well post a screenshot

from Photoshop. It will have little to no relation to the actual site,

it is just a pretty picture. Markup and CSS, IMHO, is where any site

design should begin and end.

Steve,

can't wait for /this/ thread to play out...

hesketh.com/inc. v: (919) 834-2552 f: (919) 834-2554 w: http://hesketh.com

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 14 March 2003 at 8:51am

Sorry I only produce code for web browsers both backwardly compatible for older web browsers and for new web browsers and personaly could care less what W3C say as many things that are implemented in browsers aren't part of this anyway. So I'm afraid I won't be making any of the apps W3C complient.

If you want to edit the code for your own site then you are quite welcome, but I shall not be changing it myself.

Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 14 March 2003 at 8:54am

Also a table free site that uses CSS instead will not work in the second most popular browser on the web which is still Netscape 4.7 so you would loose these people from being able to browes your site.

Like I said I produce code that is backwardly compatible with all browsers from Netscape 4 on, which OK might not be W3C complient, but at least the majourity of people can view the pages.