HTML Validation

[Olly]

After running a HTML validation test on my site using http://www.ukwda.org/validator.asp the result was that i had 121 errors in my coding.

Is this something i should be worried about?
I have checked big companies for peace of mind and found that amazon.co.uk have 748 whereas apple.com only have 3!

not entirely sure what my findings mean but some advice would be good

Thanks
Olly

[jont]

Have you serached the forum for this topic as it has been covered - see one from Myles called Starting Again.

You can do a lot to remove some of the errors (with some time, knowledge and patience) but some you are stuck with due to the internal workings of Actinic

[Bob Isaac]

I am a little sceptical about some validation sites. I compared www.netmechanic.com with validator.w3.org and there were vast differences.

One thing that needs to be correct before anything else is the <DOCTYPE> declaration at the beginning of the file. If that is wrong it may not validate it. The wrong <DOCTYPE> will also cause the browser to incorrectly display the page.

Bob

[whirlex]

i run through http://validator.w3.org yesterday, it found around 60 errors on both index pages of our 2 actinic sites.

The majority of these errors I understood and resolved (alt="" for example)

but some i dont understand, like why it wont let you use the background="" or height="" in a table! I really cant not understand these as some are essential!

1 of the pages i reduced to zero, the other I resolved the basic errors (alt etc) as I could do this using 'Find & Replace' but the rest I can not resolve as they are cosmetic and I have not yet implemented full CSS formatting.

I will have to redesign the whole index page to keep it in line with the new design that will be going live middle of next week so I will do it then! How essential this is I do not know, but its good to keep in line with accessibility standards!

[jont]

but some i dont understand, like why it wont let you use the background="" or height="" in a table! I really cant not understand these as some are essential!

The current process is to separate the structure (html or xthml) with the site layout (CSS) - as such table heights and backgrounds are not considered part of the XHTML or are supported in all browsers... but it's a minefield especially in complex sites such as those needed by Actinic

[Bob Isaac]

This is where CSS resolves many problems. I just live with some errors now, as long as all the browsers that visit our site are checked and display the pages correctly.

The HEIGHT="" is a classic example of the differences with different validators. Netmecanic says it should be used and flags up an error if it missing, whereas W3C says it should not. The more info you can give a browser about how you want things to be placed the easier it is for that browser, otherwise it has to "guess" where to put things. IE is very good at fudging things.

The <table> tag has been over used and often used as the main tool to position text and graphics, whereas it should be used only for data, as from a
MySQL database. Tables nested within tables became an 'easy' way of creating fancy looking web pages, but the W3C does not like that.

Bob