RE: http-equiv="refresh" redirects ignored in markup validator

Hi!

It would be nice if the validator just took a glance at the META 
refresh directive. If for no other reason, then that it would give me 
some kind of argument to fix this page to work with FireFox as well:

  http://www.ambk.se/index.html

mvh // Jens M Andreasen

Bug Report

Re: Bug Report

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Information - Abyss wrote:

> I am not sure if this is a bug or not in the validator

It's not.

> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="Hello.swf">" 
> width="680px" height="250px">

There is formally nothing wrong with this. Anything after the first ">" is 
content in the <object> element, which has a fairly permissive content 
model. The interpretation is not what was meant, but that's a different 
issue.

> (the item was passed into the xhtml via a value and not handcoded)

That doesn't affect validation. I suppose you explained this to describe 
the background of the mistake. A mistake it is, but not a reportable 
markup error.

> you will notice an extra > in the data field...this caused an error in 
> the way it was displayed but the page still validated

There is no extra ">" in the data attribute value, since that value is 
terminated by a quotation mark.

The effect in practice is that the content of the <object> element is 
ignored by any browser that implements the embedding suggested by that 
element (since its content is by definition just fallback content for 
situation where the embedding does not take place), but naturally the 
width and the height of the object presentation area will be defaulted, 
since the element has no width and height attributes. This might mean 
using a width and height of zero - a common though clueless browser 
default.

Perhaps the real page has something slightly different, but we cannot 
tell: you did not provide a URL.

Note that if you remove the two characters "> at the end of the first 
line, making
width="680px" height="250px"
attributes of the <object> element, as you probably meant, these 
attributes are valid but definitely incorrect. That is, they comply with 
the syntax given in the Document Type Definition, but they violate the 
requirements posed in the normative prose of HTML specifications. Use
width="680" height="250"
instead.

--

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

RE: http-equiv="refresh" redirects ignored in markup validator

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Kati wrote:

> It would be nice if the validator just took a glance at the META refresh 
> directive.

No, that would be quite incorrect. A validator is supposed to check the 
conformance of a document against the DTD it purports to comply with. 
Nothing more, nothing less. It is quite agnostic about the meaning of any 
element.

> If for no other reason, then that it would give me some kind of 
> argument to fix this page to work with FireFox as well:

Why would META refresh "directives" matter?

> http://www.ambk.se/index.html

That's quite an impressive demonstration of foolish meta tags, but the 
values of attributes of such elements should be of no interest to a 
validator. We might make concessions to meta tags specifying the character 
encoding, when the encoding cannot be decided on the basis of HTTP 
headers.

--

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Re: http-equiv="refresh" redirects ignored in markup validator

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 1 May 2007, Kati wrote:
> 
>> It would be nice if the validator just took a glance at the META 
>> refresh directive.
> 
> No, that would be quite incorrect. A validator is supposed to check the 
> conformance of a document against the DTD it purports to comply with. 
> Nothing more, nothing less. It is quite agnostic about the meaning of 
> any element.
> 

No. A validator can do quite a bit more than that. While a pure XML 
validator might only check against a DTD, an *HTML* validator should 
check a document for conformance to the HTML specification. This 
specification(s) has some constraints that are not and indeed cannot be 
expressed in a DTD. For instance, there is the constraint that a 
elements are not nested.

I am not sure if the META refresh directive is defined in the spec, but 
if it is we should check it.

If it's not, we might still want to check it if there is a decent spec 
for that element and consensus on what should be there. The validator 
already checks some accessibility issues that are not spelled out in the 
  HTML spec. We could check this too.

--

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo <at> metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/

Re: http-equiv="refresh" redirects ignored in markup validator

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Elliotte Harold wrote:

> No. A validator can do quite a bit more than that. While a pure XML validator 
> might only check against a DTD, an *HTML* validator should check a document 
> for conformance to the HTML specification.

To begin with, it cannot. Many normative parts of the HTML specification 
cannot be automatically checked (without artificial intelligence that goes 
far beyond the state of the art).

Second, it would not be a validator any more. Call it a checker, or a 
lint, or an authoring tool, but don't call it a validator if it rejects 
valid documents or accepts invalid documents.

> This specification(s) has some 
> constraints that are not and indeed cannot be expressed in a DTD. For 
> instance, there is the constraint that a elements are not nested.

That's a constraint that can be expressed in a DTD, but that's irrelevant 
gere.

> I am not sure if the META refresh directive is defined in the spec, but if it 
> is we should check it.

No, we should not and we cannot.

> If it's not, we might still want to check it if there is a decent spec for 
> that element and consensus on what should be there. The validator already 
> checks some accessibility issues that are not spelled out in the  HTML spec.

If it does that, it does not act as a validator. You can make a program 
warn about the use of red color (it could actually be quite useful), but 
this has nothing to do with a validator's job.

--

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

HTML Validation

Re: Why Validate? (Was: HTML Validation)

Hi Steve,

On May 1, 2007, at 10:00 , Steve Riley wrote:
> I was wondering how important validating your HTML code was and for  
> what reasons?  I have used the HTML validators provided the W3C  
> (http://validator.w3.org/) and have managed to fix 100% of the  
> errors on all pages of our website http://www.kepware.com/ .  I  
> like writing code that is free of errors and really appreciate the  
> free validation service that you provide, but was wondering if it  
> was really worth all the work to correct the errors and warnings.   
> I see that the majority of websites out there do not take the time  
> to do the same.

Your question is vast, and I think you will get a number of different  
answers from different people.

My personal answer would be two-fold:

* Checking your markup is part of a Quality process, akin to making  
sure your web site has good content, a good information architecture,  
is visually appealing, etc. If you want to build a good product, one  
of the steps is that you use standard technologies the proper way, so  
as to get the best leverage. But don't forget that it is only one  
part of your quality process.

* It puts *you* in control. Visiting a website with pathological  
markup and stylesheet may look OK on your browser, but that's only  
because you are using one of the modern browsers with a lot of effort  
put into error recovery. A properly build web page will not rely upon  
anyone else's error recovery mechanism, is less prone to break on  
agents that don't have such recovery mechanism, and will perform  
better with agents that frown upon bad markup (some search engines,  
some browsers too - look up "quirks mode" for more info).

There is also a little article in the validator's documentation,  
which Nick Kew wrote a while ago - I think it is still pertinent  
today: http://validator.w3.org/docs/why.html

I am certain others on the list will have other motivations, some  
technical, some ethical, ...

Hope this helps.
olivier
--

-- 
olivier Thereaux - W3C - http://www.w3.org/People/olivier/
W3C Open Source Software: http://www.w3.org/Status

Re: [beta test] "Software error"

On Apr 24, 2007, at 14:07 , Frank Ellermann wrote:

>
> Hi, one of my usual validator torture tests resulted in this message:
>
> | Software error:
>
> | Unexpected error message format ((invalid
> location):47239440633056.2322:W: URL | Redirected to
> | "http://www.xyzzy.claranet.de/w3c/html2070.dtd"
> | ) at /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.8/SGML/Parser/OpenSP.pm line 45
>
> Tested document: <http://www.xyzzy.claranet.de/home/test/res.html>

Good catch. This probably is a bug upstream (either in the  
SGML::Parser::OpenSP library [1] or in the OpenSP Parser) but I made  
sure this does not affect the validator[2].

[1] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php? 
func=detail&aid=1710662&group_id=106431&atid=644086
[2] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=4516

The fix is in CVS, will be in the next public Beta.

Thanks!
--

-- 
olivier

Re: HTML Validation

On 5/1/07, Steve Riley <steven.riley <at> kepware.com> wrote:
>
> I was wondering how important validating your HTML code was and for what
> reasons?

My $.02:

If you write sloppy English, you shouldn't be surprised if it gets
misinterpreted. Similarly, if you write invalid HTML and some user
agent misinterprets it, the responsibility for that error starts with
you.

To put it another way, if you write valid HTML and a user agent
doesn't interpret it the way you want, then at least you've done all
that *you* can to make things right. On HTML-related Usenet groups,
people often insist on valid markup as a prerequisite for offering
assistance. This is described eloquently here:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you

>  I see that the majority of websites out there do
> not take the time to do the same.

The popularity of a technique is no guarantee of its quality. See your
nearest McDonalds for a real-world example! As Alan Flavell put it,
"the saying about 'billions of flies can't be wrong' comes
unappetisingly to mind."

Happy validating

--

-- 
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Whole-site HTML validation, link checking and more