This template is XHTML 1.0 compliant. Validate the XHTML ...

[gluepack]

Does anyone really care about this?

I was modifying my wxabout.php and thought "wow, I'll give it a try" (I actually thought "damn, I'll have to remove this sentence, if my code doesn't validate well") and it showed 68 errors.

When people care about whether you have an alt on an img or not, you have to wonder. It isn't even just a warning. Now, perhaps we should worry more about people who write code with no structure to it so you can't determine easily where you can add your own code.

Anyway, I dutifully modified all my img's to add them and, while I was about it, added the / to my > which I carelessly forget (I haven't found a browser yet that cares about that omission).

After I ran that through, it objected to an ampersand by itself. I thought "lol, I never do that, I always use &" so I investigated. It was actually in menubar.php in one of my menu items but was being constructed by that program from the original & I supplied. Lol, you can't win.

So, I thought "forget that". After having spent hours trying to get a ° through the system for an RSS feed, I wasn't about to waste time with it. It was only a warning anyway.

Then, I spotted my ubiquitous "..." and thought "oh, I'd better change that for a …"

A little while ago, I discovered http://line25.com/articles/10-html-enti ... dnt-commit and, probably erroneously, take it as the bible truth (lol, it was probably written in 1999, you just never know).

Although having always used & I honestly hadn't considered what other entities were out there. It is there I saw the ellipsis and went on a crusade (albeit walking, as opposed to on horseback) to modify all my code and, wow, do I use a lot of them. It is going very slowly.

So... as I was in menubar.php and I use a lot of them, I changed them all (err.. about four or five) to …, uploaded the changed file and refreshed wxabout.php.

You have to know that the electricity infrastructure (among other infrastructures) in Bulgaria is essentially crap so, if you don't lose the internet because of poor internet, you're sure to lose it because of the poor electricity.

So... I wasn't particularly surprised when... I sat and waited... and waited... and waited... for validator.w3.org to tell me something and, eventually, it did.

Lol, 16417 Errors, 7 warning(s).

I haven't bothered to see if all 16417 errors are ... related but the first several thousand all say something like...

Line 4, Column x: non SGML character number 0 …

Still, it displays ok so I think I'll just remove the "This template is XHTML 1.0 compliant. Validate the XHTML ..." statement.

[saratogaWX]

While it is not necessary to have valid XHTML 1.0-Transitional in the pages, you are kind of at the mercy of the specific browser to guess what you may have meant when you did a particular markup. Modern browsers are pretty good at that, but the guesses may render your page oddly and to prevent that, using valid markup is highly recommended.

For your current homepage issue, I think two simple fixes would reduce the validator's confusion and error counts.

In flyout-menu.xml you have

Code: Select all

<item caption="Radar & Satellite">

which should be (strangely enough)

Code: Select all

<item caption="Radar &amp; Satellite">

because the XML parser automatically removes '&' and replaces it with '&' as it processes it.

In menubar.php you have a

Code: Select all

</P>

instead of a

Code: Select all

</p>

.. the XHTML spec calls for all tags and attribute names to be lower-case. Fussy, fussy .. (but the requirement is removed in HTML5 thankfully).

After fixing those two, try your validation again .. just make sure any link that has arguments on the URL uses '&' instead of '&' and any other gripes should be fixed.

Happy validator appeasing

Best regards,
Ken

[gluepack]

Yes, I was aware of the big P's and had been changing them but my Notepad font doesn't differentiate between them clearly enough. Still, if my brain would click into gear and remember to do such things, I could probably do a global change. Actually, I come from a long line of coding that believes in parsers doing the work. Having to think in upper and lower case is for writing articles not coding software.

Ok wxabout.php now gives 2 errors 3 warnings (from menubar) and all associated with WU's widget, that isn't working properly anyway.

Thanks for that, although I still find it hard to believe that two minor errors (well, "errors" is a bit of an exaggeration) are enough to cause 16k error messages.