This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (Full Version)

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peterd123 -> This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/16/2007 17:32:36)

I have 21 errors and This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! Can anyone please advise my URL is http://www.finegbstamps.co.uk
I have only just started trying to build a site, so do not know too much in this field. But seem to have built something the military might be interested in, as it runs in complete stealth mode.

Pete



jurgen -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/16/2007 19:42:26)

There are a lot of posts regarding doc type declarations. For one, you have the wrong doc type in your page: 
<! DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">


In your case it should read: 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">


Fort more information regarding this subject you might want to read this article:
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/doctype/




Tailslide -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/17/2007 3:59:46)

If you don't use a correct complete DOCTYPE you end up relying on various browsers' error handling routines to decipher your page. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't - it makes life a lot harder to get sites working cross-browser.



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/17/2007 5:39:20)

Thanks for your help, I have changed the Doctype with the one you advised, but I still find that I'm getting 21 errors and no "doctype found" meesage.
I will have a look at the site you mentioned. It's all new to me so will try not to pester everyone too much.

Pete



jurgen -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/17/2007 9:43:51)

quote:

<! DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC


You have a space in the wrong spot

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC



coreybryant -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/18/2007 18:44:47)

Adding a DOCTYPE might be helpful as well.



d a v e -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/19/2007 9:20:04)

your google analytics code should be at the very end of all your other code immediately before the closing
</body>

so move this to there
script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">

</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-3028970-1";
urchinTracker();
</script>


have a look that all your table tags balance and that shuold clear up alot of the rest

see how you get on with those and then come back if you're still gettting errors




d a v e -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/20/2007 6:51:51)

remove the end / from - that's for xhtml, not for you ;) 
…v="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>


take out all the references to border-colour and its variants: use css instead if you need coloured borders

the errors to do with ampersands &, you can read about in the error message but basically where you have
&
you use
"&" (without the quotes)

try those for now and then see what you're left with ;)



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/20/2007 15:35:41)

Have you got anymore tips on validating my html.

thanks
Pete



d a v e -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/20/2007 16:39:46)

short of learning html, no ;)

i'm no longer based in the UK, i'm now living in finland ;)

if you have firefox web browser (http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/firefox/) you can install the tidy extension (http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/download.html) that will clean up most/all of your html

doing this will take you down to 6 errors - concerned with the border colouring and shading that you have - which you would have to replace with css for borders and backgrounds on possibly adjacent cells, but i haven't used tables for layout fo so long i can't remember ;)

if you're interested in seeing the cleaned file you can find it here http://pp.kpnet.fi/prescott/stuff/finegbstamps%20co%20uk.zip
i suggest you use it to see how the errors were fixed rather than using the file itself.

maybe someone else has some ideas on the border shading?? etc



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/20/2007 18:16:58)

Cheers Dave, you have been of great help. But I think i'm going to have to start reading about html if I want to move on.
Pete



d a v e -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/21/2007 1:51:03)

yep :)

try the html and css tutorials here
http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp
and here http://www.htmldog.com/

and then when you want to try out some css (cascading style sheets) you can get a free css editor called topstyle lite http://www.newsgator.com/download/products/ts3lite.exe




Tailslide -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/21/2007 2:52:35)

quote:

ORIGINAL: peterd123

Can someone tell me why it is that when I checked Amazon.com it comes up with something like 970 errors, but they don't have any problems. Nearly every site that comes up on top with Google still has plenty of errors and no doctype.

Thanks
Pete


Amazon don't have a DOCTYPE so the validator will throw up pretty much everything else as an error on the page whether it would actually be an error with a DOCTYPE present or not.

Many large websites still have a ton of errors on them but they also generally have a lot of staff who whilst they're probably unable to get the code clean are able to check cross-browser to make sure these errors don't actually have a detrimental effect at the moment. They are also able to rebuild the site every couple of years to allow for newer, better browsers. Most smaller companies just don't have those resources.

(BTW I really hope that Amazon aren't rolling out that layout with the vertical navigation as it's pretty inaccessible - I can't use it without a mouse whereas the older tab-based one was easy to use)

Not all errors will break a page in a particular browser. But who's to say those errors won't break the page in Opera 11 or IE9 (well ok we'll all be 120 by the time they bring out IE9). I couldn't say. I couldn't be sure. So to make my life easier in the long run I at least start out with valid code.

Validation isn't an end in itself - it's a means to an end. Think of it like spell-checking a large document - you'd certainly want everything spelt right wouldn't you? But then once it's spelt correctly it still has to be worth reading...

It's a normal process to move from "I want my site to validate" to "hang on, most other big sites don't validate, why should I bother?". People then tend to go either to "well I'm not going to bother" or "some work now may well save me money and time in future so I'll do it".

Usually, it's not as hard as it might look. A list of 5million errors might well reduce very quickly once the first few are fixed.

The best HTML/CSS tutorial site I've come across is http://www.htmldog.com/ - well worth a look through.





peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/21/2007 5:07:36)

Thanks for the info. I have saved the sites you mentioned, will have a look through them.
Pete



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/21/2007 5:20:03)

Yes I agree with you. I look at this as a challenge. I will learn a lot by repairing my site. I was just curious as to why these other sites are working. I am totally new to this, about 2 weeks. But already have learnt so much, mainly due to the good people in this forum. It's anoying when I can see the problem but still can't repair them due to lack of knowledge. It looks like I have to learn 2 packages including HTML and CSS, so will have my time taken up for a while.
Thanks
Pete



mtfm -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/21/2007 9:50:04)

I look at doctypes/etc this way: a doctype is like telling the browser up front what language and dialect you are about to feed it.

Unless you explicitly tell the browser what language and dialect you are going to use, it has to guess. Or if you tell it one thing and actually do another it might be reading Chaucer's English when you are writing in Cockney. Or vice versa.

Either way, the browser could muddle through, I mean it's all english of a sort, but might get hung up on some of the finer points.

So if you tell it what you're going to use, and then use it appropriately, you can be reasonably assured all browsers will read it the same way.




peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/21/2007 19:24:51)

Thanks for all your help, I thought it would be best to get my html validated before I move on to more interesting stuff. I have got the errors down to 7, but am having some trouble with these. Once I have sorted this out can I then apply the colours using CSS?

Thanks

Pete



Tailslide -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 2:45:36)

Pete

If you're having trouble then post the remaining few errors here and we'll help.

Yes you can apply any sort of styling and layout with CSS.



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 5:08:40)

Here the errors for www.finegbstamps.co.uk

Line 21, Column 8: end tag for element "SCRIPT" which is not open.
</script>

Line 24, Column 20: start tag for "TR" omitted, but its declaration does not permit this.
<td width="100%">✉
Line 57, Column 0: unclosed start-tag requires SHORTTAG YES.
<p align="center"></a>✉
The construct <foo<bar> is valid in HTML (it is an example of the rather obscure “Shorttags” feature) but its use is not recommended. In most cases, this is a typo that you will want to fix. If you really want to use shorttags, be aware that they are not well implemented by browsers.

Line 57, Column 17: document type does not allow element "P" here; missing one of "APPLET", "OBJECT", "MAP", "IFRAME", "BUTTON" start-tag.
<p align="center"></a>

Line 63, Column 224: cannot generate system identifier for general entity "img".
…EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC

Line 63, Column 224: general entity "img" not defined and no default entity.
…EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC✉
This is usually a cascading error caused by a an undefined entity reference or use of an unencoded ampersand (&) in an URL or body text. See the previous message for further details.

Line 63, Column 227: reference to entity "img" for which no system identifier could be generated.
…A17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC" a✉
This is usually a cascading error caused by a an undefined entity reference or use of an unencoded ampersand (&) in an URL or body text. See the previous message for further details.

Line 63, Column 223: entity was defined here.
…=EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271D Line 80, Column 80: document type does not allow element "SCRIPT" here.
…com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">✉


Line 83, Column 9: end tag for "TABLE" omitted, but its declaration does not permit this.
</script>✉
You forgot to close a tag, or
you used something inside this tag that was not allowed, and the validator is complaining that the tag should be closed before such content can be allowed.
The next message, "start tag was here" points to the particular instance of the tag in question); the positional indicator points to where the validator expected you to close the tag.

Line 58, Column 0: start tag was here.
<table>


I seem to have a lot of errors with line 63 which is an affiliate link for Stanley Gibbons.

Thanks for all your help.
Any problems with your cars or Pc's, let me know I may be able to help you.

Pete

Pete



Tailslide -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 6:20:42)

Ok - here you go:

Remove the </script> tag on line 21 (there's no script there now so it's unecessary)

On line 22-24 you've got this: 

<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse"  width="100%" id="AutoNumber1">
  
<td width="100%">


You need the opening row tag in between the table tag and the opening cell tag - so it should be like this: 

<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse"  width="100%" id="AutoNumber1">
<tr>
<td width="100%">


On lines 56-57 remove this: 

<a href="http://www.stanleygibbons.com/home/index.asp?afx=EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F"
<p align="center"></a>


It's superflous (you've got the image link afterwards).

The line 63 problem is due to there being an unencoded ampersand in the affiliate link image. So replace:

This: 
<p align="center"> <a href="http://www.stanleygibbons.com/home/index.asp?afx=EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F"><img src="http://affiliates.stanleygibbons.com/x_image.asp?afx=EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC" alt="" border="0"></a>


With this: 
<p align="center"> <a href="http://www.stanleygibbons.com/home/index.asp?afx=EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F"><img src="http://affiliates.stanleygibbons.com/x_image.asp?afx=EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC" alt="" border="0"></a>


The Line 83 problem is a missing closing tag for a table. Stick this: 

</table>


in after the </tr> on line 79.

Be aware that if you want to add CSS styling to the pages once you've got this sorted out - you've got a lot of inline styling (in other words styling stuff inside tags themselves) which will overrule any CSS rule that you put in a stylesheet - so... just in case you run into difficulty getting a style to work you might want to check the code for that particular element and just make sure that there's no styling within the tag itself - if there is, remove it.



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 6:59:38)

My errors seem to have changed, my line 63 is now line 60. Not sure whats wrong with it, they both look the same. Plus there seems to be some others.
What would you advise for the styling? do you think that I should start the home page again from scratch then upload it to replace this one?

Thanks
Pete



Tailslide -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 7:49:12)

Hi Pete

Yes that's the same error as mentioned in my post - it's moved up because you've removed some of the lines above it (other errors) and so line 63 is now line 60. Just paste in the solution in the previous post and that will solve that one.

The other one is easy enough too: 
font size="6">       </font> <u><a href="new_page_6.htm"><font size="5">Books</font></a></u></i></b></td>


You need to remove the closing </i> and closing </b> tags as they don't have an opening counterpart (elements such as these should have opening and closing tags)

As far as the styling goes - My advice would be that if you want to use stylesheets to set out your presentation for the site (which is a very good idea) then to make your life much easier I'd have as little as possible styling-wise within the page itself - control as much as possible from the stylesheet. That way, if you need to make a change throughout the site (say you wanted all your links to be purple!) then you could change it in just one place instead of having to go into every page.

I don't use tables for layout and therefore frankly I have no idea what the best way of controlling their width would be. It looks like it would be horribly complex to try to control a table layout from a stylesheet so you might be better off leaving widths etc within the tags as they are now.



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 8:03:11)

I'm down to just 2 errors thanks to you.

Line 60, Column 224: cannot generate system identifier for general entity "img".
…EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC✉


Line 60, Column 224: general entity "img" not defined and no default entity.
…EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC✉
This is usually a cascading error caused by a an undefined entity reference or use of an unencoded ampersand (&) in an URL or body text. See the previous message for further details.

Line 60, Column 227: reference to entity "img" for which no system identifier could be generated.
…A17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271DC" a✉
This is usually a cascading error caused by a an undefined entity reference or use of an unencoded ampersand (&) in an URL or body text. See the previous message for further details.

Line 60, Column 223: entity was defined here.
…=EBDA17C1-F28D-41D0-95D1-20262D10FE7F&img=D84B7C56-FEEB-4C8D-B2F7-1DF6598271D

Not too sure what to do with this.

I will have a look at CSS after this to make the page look better. Hopefully there won't be tooooo many problems.

Thanks

Pete



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 8:06:08)

Sorry forgot to mention that when I copy and pasted the line like you mentioned, it showed up as text in my preview and not the link.
Pete



Tailslide -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 8:56:15)

Yep it's the same error.

Where were you pasting the line? Into code view? Should work.

Anyway - what you need to do is go into code view, find that link line and add amp; in front of the & so it reads & that's the problem.



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 13:30:14)

Have tried everything you said but cannot get rid of the last two errors. When I try to copy and paste it seems to pick up some code from else where, even though I have only highlighted the line you gave me.

Think I may have to live with these two.

Or may be do away with that affiliate link altogether.

Would like to add some style and colour now, so most probably will end up with loads more errors once I start playing with it.

Thanks
Pete



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 13:50:03)

Ok I managed to copy and paste the link but it still gives the errors.

Pete



peterd123 -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 19:01:45)

I've had alook at the tutorials you advised about. And am thinking of developing a new site from scratch using CSS and html seperately like the tutorials state. Will I be able to just upload and replace my existing site www.finegbstamps.co.uk or will I have loads of problems?

Thanks
Pete



coreybryant -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/22/2007 19:18:45)

The ampersand usually needs to bbe 
& a m p ;
(just without the spaces - had to add them in there so it would show the way I wanted and not show an ampersand) but I am not sure if you can replace that properly in the URL. Usually you can, but some affiliate software will throw errors.



Tailslide -> RE: This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! (11/23/2007 2:35:08)

(rolls eyes) sorry didn't check that the post would actually post what I wanted it to!!! Yes as Corey says it should be & a m p ; (without spaces) rather than just &. I tried it locally here and it worked ok.



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