Starting Again!

[magicalwonders]

Just a quick update. The results from my previous post was a result of just validating the act_primary. I then tried uploading the changes with the <form> tags outside of the <tables> tags and validating online. I lost the store completely (404 error). Plus I couldn't get it back even by refreshing with original data.

Have wiped out my catalog directory and uploaded example store using clean layout 13. Who knows, it might be my lucky number!

Am I right in thinking that all the clean layout themes are designed with nested tables in the act_primary? I can't visualise this code at all and it doesn't help when it comes to sorting out incorrectly nested tags.

Myles

[cdicken]

Miles

I must be missing something here regarding this advice.

The advice I gave you was for Act_SimpleSearch.html, not Act_Primary.html.

I'm afraid I've got no more advice to give you. I don't really understand most of the W3C messages, and I think that most of the time they are giving messages for perfectly valid code that just happens to look a bit odd because it was generated from a set of templates.

Sorry I cannot be any further assistance.

[Mike Hughes]

I've been doing some work on my pages and seem to have got rid of most of my validation errors bar 3 (down from 80 or so) for the actinic stuff at the start.

Things that you can do:

1. Always have an ALT="alttext" for every image. Even if blank.
2. Any non alphanumeric value for a tag should be within quotes.i.e. color="#ffffff"
3. The ampersand '&' in a url should be replaced by '&amp;' . Note for cgi calls where & is used for the actinic_referrer stuff.
4. Ensure the <form> for search is properly nested within the table. If you get layout problems where the </form> tries to cause a new line then put style="display:inline;" within the form declaration.
5. Make sure you have 'language=JavaScript' and 'type="text/javascript"' in all javascript statements.
6. Remove old bits that are there for IE3, NS4 compatibility. (though looking at my logs I still see someone (more than one?) using IE3).

After this, the rest were pretty much html errors on my part.

Mike

PS. So far I've only done my home/brochure page, there may be a few more problems to fix on my product pages.

[magicalwonders]

Chris wrote: The advice I gave you was for Act_SimpleSearch.html, not Act_Primary.html

.
Why? My problem was with the act_primary. I don't believe I mentioned SimpleSearch.

Mike, thanks for the tips. I came across most of them while ploughing through the books over the weekend.

Chris wrote:I think that most of the time they are giving messages for perfectly valid code that just happens to look a bit odd because it was generated from a set of templates.

I've managed to eliminate almost all the errors (for act_primary) outside of Netquotevar stuff by creating my own template. This did away with the form error, table error and TR errors! I don't believe these errors could be considered valid code.

Anyway, I feel as though I'm making progress. I've created a test directory at the following URL where I can test my corrections.

http://www.magicalwonders.com/Templates13/13new.html

The only three remaining errors in this template (that I'm stuck with) concerns javascript. I know, I know, Javascript is not HTML. But as the errors concern tags, I was wondering if anything can be done?

Line 79, column 86: end tag for element "SCRIPT" which is not open
...='contact'>" + _m + "<\/a>");</SCRIPT>

Line 118, column 86: end tag for element "SCRIPT" which is not open
...='contact'>" + _m + "<\/a>");</SCRIPT>

Line 129, column 16: end tag for element "SCRIPT" which is not open
// --></SCRIPT><!-- </font></span> </div> --><!-- FORM action=NETQUOTEVAR:CGIU

The first two relate to mailto script. I'm not sure what the third one is about.

Any Javascript monkeys out there able to solve this one?

Many thanks.

Myles

[Mike Hughes]

You need to have 'language=JavaScript' as well as 'type=text/javascript'

See if that helps

Mike

[magicalwonders]

Hi Mike,

I've got so many different templates on the go! I've already tried that but it doesn't make any difference. (I just forgot to upload that version)

My third JS error relates to the following:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
document.write("NETQUOTEVAR:CARTCOOKIEITEMS&nbsp;" + getCartItem(3)+"&nbsp;<BR>");
document.write("NETQUOTEVAR:CARTCOOKIEVALUE&nbsp;" + getCartItem(1));
// -->
</script>
I know it also need the type declaration, but what does this script actually do. Do I really need it? Should the &amp; be included in this code? I've seen online tutorials which suggests that it does.

Myles

[Mike Hughes]

Your & is Ok here because it's being used as the break for the encoded character.

i.e.

&amp; is the encoded character for '&'
&nbsp; is the encoded character for ' ' i.e. space

the problem with & on its own in other places such as urls is that it's really reserved as the special break character for encoded characters.

This script is the one that gets the cart summary from the cookie (number of items and value) and displays them. It's up to you whether you want to display this or not.

Mike

[magicalwonders]

Thanks Mike,

I can probably live without the cart summary.

I've managed to eliminate the other two errors.

This works

<SCRIPT type="text/javascript" language="javaScript">

This doesn't

<language="javaScript" SCRIPT type="text/javascript" >

It's a bit touchy isn't it?

Well that takes care of my act_primary!

Many thanks

Myles

[jont]

This may not be applicable in this instance but have just noticed that when I insert a HTML page as a CUSTOMVAR into the Act_Primary and set to use contents it also inserts the <body> <head> tags etc as I used Dreamweaver to create the file to be included - Actinic obviously (now I think about it) inserts all the info from the HTML file - tags and all - not just the text info I want to include.

Hence each page was getting 3 <head> <body> <html> etc tags .... not w3c happy but rendering fine in all browsers none the less.

[magicalwonders]

Hiya Jonty,

I don't have that problem, but I have moved a CUSTOMVAR:ACTSTDWIDTH from between a nested table tags to between td tags. I'm hoping that's O.K. as I don't particularly want to build a nested table template by hand!

Myles

[magicalwonders]

Hi Folks,

I've so far managed to reduce my validation errors from an initial 55 down to 8. (Not too bad I reckon)

I'm only working on the index page at the moment at the following url:

http://www.magicalwonders.com/acatalog/index.html

What is bugging the heck out of me is that I still seem to have one last table tag or nesting error that I've failed to track down and fix. W3C is reporting the following:

Line 13, column 1011: end tag for "TABLE" which is not finished
...nic:SECTION BLOB="A0000.cat"/></table><A NAME="sectionbottom"></A><DIV ALIGN=

Can somebody take a look and help pinpoint this error? Alternatively a few valium might help!

Thanks,

Myles.

[Univiz]

This may not be applicable in this instance but have just noticed that when I insert a HTML page as a CUSTOMVAR into the Act_Primary and set to use contents it also inserts the <body> <head> tags etc as I used Dreamweaver to create the file to be included - Actinic obviously (now I think about it) inserts all the info from the HTML file - tags and all - not just the text info I want to include.

Hence each page was getting 3 <head> <body> <html> etc tags .... not w3c happy but rendering fine in all browsers none the less.

Hello Jont

If I'm creating anything in DW for inclusion in Actinic, I delete all the html in the page before I start.

Regards
Sharon

[magicalwonders]

That's interesting information Sharon, but doesn't really help me concerning the problem I posted. Anybody?

Myles

[pinbrook]

Myles

I am quite interested in your pursuit for clean code - however it would be helpful if you could put all your posts in to one thread, then I can be aware of the full picture

Jo

[magicalwonders]

I agree Jo,

It is however, sometimes tricky to determine if a topic should be the subject of a new thread or not.

If you look at all my posts over the last few days, only one of them concerns a problem of validating code. That being this one:-

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=14962

Maybe that post should have gone here. In fact, I'm now sure it should. So my apologies for getting that one wrong. As you can see from my latest posting on this thread, I am making an effort to group validation problems together.

So, back to my posting of the other day... Anybody?

Myles