Valid HTML?

[hinterglem]

The HTML generated by actinic does not appear to be valid according to W3C standards. Is this intentional or is it likely to be a side-effect of something I have done wrong?

W3C HTML Validator

Russ.

[DarrenSpink]

Don't worry about it, there are lots of tags and attributes that are not strict, check out www.bbc.co.uk, or www.microsoft.com in the vaildator.

[simonmc]

Don't worry about it, there are lots of tags and attributes that are not strict, check out www.bbc.co.uk, or www.microsoft.com in the vaildator.

Just because someone else does something wrong (Check out Bill Gates business ethics) does not make it correct. That was a very poor answer stating Microsoft and BBC as upstanding internet community members.

A valid answer from an Actinic developer would be appreciated on this point.

Simon

[Mike Hughes]

???

1) I'm not aware of any actinic site that passes w3c validation so I don't think you've done anything wrong.

2) despite this I wouldn't say it's intentional on actinic's part either.

I'm not sure what other kind of answer you're expecting from Actinic. Validation by w3c is completely unimportant given that we all live in the real world.

Mike

[simonmc]

???

1) I'm not aware of any actinic site that passes w3c validation so I don't think you've done anything wrong.

2) despite this I wouldn't say it's intentional on actinic's part either.

I'm not sure what other kind of answer you're expecting from Actinic. Validation by w3c is completely unimportant given that we all live in the real world.

Mike

???? I can do that too. I found those characters on my keyboard which is covered by ASCII character set.

I would not say that W3C is unimportant. I think that a lot of people follow this standard because:

1. It sets out a standard for clean, fast and universally understandable code.
2. It is easy for designers to pick up where others have left off.
3. It encourages clean code from designers so that clients who choose any old Tom Dick or Harry who know a bit of HTML are not ripping people off.

We all know that the world is a better place for standards because they encourage best practices and high quality.

Just because others do not do things the way they ought to do it does not make them right. I have given you the arguments for following the standard. please give me the argument for not following the standard.

Simon

[NormanRouxel]

please give me the argument for not following the standard

Because Actinic wouldn't work (in Business mode anyway) if it did follow strict standards. E.g. the non standard <ACTINIC:...> tags are needed as markers for sections of text that get parsed and altered by the Perl scripts.

Luckily it's an Internet Maxim that you should be strict in what you send but generous in what you accept. That's why real world browsers simply discard any tags or tag attributes that they don't understand. Actinic is doing pretty well by generating static pages that can also be modified on the fly when passed through Perl scripts that deal with altering displayed prices for logged-in business customers.

Norman

[simonmc]

Because Actinic wouldn't work (in Business mode anyway) if it did follow strict standards. E.g. the non standard <ACTINIC:...> tags are needed as markers for sections of text that get parsed and altered by the Perl scripts.

Luckily it's an Internet Maxim that you should be strict in what you send but generous in what you accept. That's why real world browsers simply discard any tags or tag attributes that they don't understand. Actinic is doing pretty well by generating static pages that can also be modified on the fly when passed through Perl scripts that deal with altering displayed prices for logged-in business customers.

Norman

Sounds like a good enough argument to me.

Simon

[Pneumatus]

One thing to remeber is that the W3 standards exist to allow full compliance between browsers that follow the standards and allow the pages to be rendered in exactly the same way despote what browser you use.

As long as you check the site/page with the major browsers (IE, Mozilla and FireFox) and they all look ok then there's not a problem. around 90% of your visitors will be using IE and the other 10% will be using Netscape/Mozilla etc - full compliance is not going to make a huge amount of difference.

[hinterglem]

Well it's a relief to know that it's not my fault. For the record, I think standards are important and life would be so much easier if everyone followed them. Unfortunately few - if any - browsers are fully compliant with w3c standards anyway, so as long as actinic's html works ok I won't complain (although it would be nice if...)