W3 Validation? (Full Version)

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CavalierLady -> W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 17:25:59)

It's been years since I have touched FrontPage and now that I am designing a new site, I put off chores instead of doing them with each page.

I have not a single page title, meta tags, or alt text on 200 pages. I fixed the alt text on the index page only, but according to: http://validator.w3.org/, I still have lots of mistakes.

1. Which form of DocType should I choose? That is greek to me. There are so many to choose from!
2. FrontPage (2000) included: <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">, but I'm told that is not correct and I've no idea what I'm supposed to change it to.
3. "document type does not allow element "BODY" here." Excuse me, but doesn't one start with <body> and end with </body>??

Are the meta tags and this validation still as, or more important that it was several years ago? I have no css, only the simplest scripts, and I'm relying on FP for the coding, as I've forgotten what little coding I did know. From what I have read searching the forums, some FP code doesn't validate. So what is important enough that I must changes mistakes I will run into in the future, and what can I leave the way it is? This is just a personal site, nothing fancy.

Thanks,
Maria



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 17:45:43)

As it's a personal site there are no laws governing accessibility so there's no real need to do anything unless you want to.

Doctype. If it's a FP push button job then you probably need

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

unless you decide to use frames, then it's

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">

explanations here


<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
is deprecated code and unfortunately a lot of the WYSIWYG editors still include it. You should have
<script type="text/javascript">


quote:

document type does not allow element "BODY" here

is probably because you have no Doctype or something else is wrong elsewhere. Which page was it on? Your homepage?

The Meta tags are important if you want people to see decent info if they search for your site. Google uses your Title and description to display something sensible in the search results. Apparently it doesn't lend loads of weight to the keywords any more but other search engines do.



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 17:48:12)

The Body error is being reported because you have two of them. If you view your Page Source in your browser you'll see 

</head>

<body bgcolor="#383838" link="#CCCCCC" vlink="#999999" alink="#E0E0E0">

<BODY>



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 17:53:32)

OK, as to the future. Well that really depends a lot on Microsoft and whether they make IE completely compliant. If they do then a lot of FP stuff will cause problems. They have moved to ExpressionWeb for their development tool and no longer support FP so you make what you like of their future plans. Certainly the developer community will keep on at them until IE is compliant as it causes us too much hassle developing a site that works in all browsers except IE and then having to hack the code just for MS.

As it is, as long as hosts continue to provide FPSEs then your site will work in IE if not other browsers. Even when they stop, as long as your site doesn't have things in it that positively need FPSEs then you can continue to use FP but upload using FTP instead of publishing.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 18:09:35)

Thank you very kindly for your prompt reply! I do appreciate it.

As the site is, as you said, a personal site with no frames, I will go with your first suggestion, thank you.

I would never have known how to change the script language, thank you for that.

I checked some other pages, and it seems that only the index page had the body listed twice. So perhaps my other pages will be allright when I get to modifying them.

I will have to delete some things from my computer and download IE and Netscape once again, in order to check my pages, as I use Firefox. I hope major changes aren't coming soon, or I'll have to hire a site done with my limited experience. I am, btw, publishing, as I have always read, and even my host suggests never using ftp with FrontPage so it won't corrupt the fp extensions.

I realize that styles, CSS, frames, and other more complicated types of coding require more information, but I have seen the source pages for other sites, just chosen at random, and some have a dozen lines of things, such as:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
<META NAME="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" CONTENT="no">
<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="7 Days">
<META NAME="CLASSIFICATION" CONTENT="xyz">
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="INDEX,FOllOW, All">
<META http-equiv="Expires" content="0"/>
<META NAME="rating" CONTENT="General">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="xxxx xxxxx">

.... just for example. Are there other useful things that I should be including besides just the standard stuff that Front Page includes for me? Is there a tutorial on the net that explains some of the additional coding that one might use?

Thanks so much for your help!

Maria



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 18:19:27)

quote:

even my host suggests never using ftp with FrontPage so it won't corrupt the fp extensions.

Absolutely correct but if your host decides to stop supporting them then it won't be a problem. All you need to remember if you're uploading with FTP is that when you open the FTP package you'll see a load of folders that are hidden in FP but are vital to the site if you've used any bots. They are called things like _borders and you have to upload those and their contents as well, publish does that automatically.

Meta tags go on for ever and you can add as many as you want. You can even make your own up should you want to. Some of those tell the browser which language you're using and which encoding so it has a good idea of what to do with the site.

Here are the common ones

There are lots of other things you can add in, my site has a pile of them but unless you're really optimising then you won't need them. I've used all that lot as a reminder for client sites otherwise I always miss something I should have added.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" CONTENT="no"> for example stops IE from popping up the helpful little box that allows people to one-click steal your images.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 18:31:08)

Thanks for the reply and for that helpful link! I'll read through that later!

And thanks for that extra tip. Since my site is all images, that tip will be most useful!!

This helped a bunch, thanks... now off to work on these chores I hate the most. :)

Maria



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/15/2007 18:51:58)

LOL! You can come and do mine next.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 7:54:25)

Before I started adding meta tags, I was down to about 3 errors per page on the W3 validator. Now that I have added meta tags, I am well over a dozen errors per page. And most of them have to do with the meta tags. They mainly mention the ' > ' tag or the ' /> " tag. I am not understanding why they say this is not allowed. I presumed I was adding them correctly, and they appear to look like the explanations in the link you gave above. And they appear pretty much the same as other source codes. Can you see what I am doing wrong?



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 8:29:45)

Not really as I don't have a link to the page to check the source code, but I suspect from the errors you've listed that it's to do with the closing of the tag.

If your Doctype is HTML 4 Transitional then the tag needs to end with > 
<META http-equiv="Expires" content="0">


If your Doctype is XHTML then all statements need to be properly closed and the tag should end with /> 
<META http-equiv="Expires" content="0"/>


You can't mix and match.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 8:33:48)

Okay, that makes sense. I will have to go back and check all those. Link is in my signature: www.cavalierlady.com

Thanks!



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 8:40:51)

LOL! You know I went and checked your profile to find it. Didn't look at your sig! Oh Dear I'm worse than I thought.[&:]



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 8:42:42)

It's the ICRA labels, take the / off the end.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 8:45:03)

Thank you so much. I'll go back and give that a try.
I appreciate the help! :) Happy Holidays!



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 8:45:04)

And get rid of the

This Site Best Viewed at 1024 x 768

it works at other resolutions as well and that statement annoys the heck out of a lot of people. Nobody is going to change their resolution just to view your site.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 8:49:52)

Okay, I'll do that, too. You're right.

I notice some meta tags without the "/" and just an ending ">" are being marked as incorrect as well. But I'll go back and change what you suggested first.

Thank you!



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 9:01:29)

Hallelujah! I got one page to validate! 1 down, about 200 to go, : )
Thank you very kindly for your help!!



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 9:31:59)

The additional / will have a knock on effect on the others. Fix one, fix all.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 10:04:26)

Okay, I see that now. But why do I get this:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer

... when adding the icon?



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 10:41:59)

When adding what Icon? That link tries to validate this thread. What line of code are you adding?



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 11:02:45)

After validating, and the W3 validator tells you that the page that was submitted has passed validation, further down the page, they give you the code for the icon that you can place on your page.

I did place the icon on my home page, bottom, and the link came from there. It refers to my home page, not this page of this thread.

the code to add the icon is:

<p>
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer"><img
src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401-blue"
alt="Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional" height="31" width="88"></a>
</p>





jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 11:09:11)

Yes the link would work from your page and does, as it seems to all be validating now.

If you post the same link here, because it uses uri=referrer, it tries to validate this page.

Word of warning. It's OK displaying that HTML logo but you must make certain that whenever you make any changes to your page that you run it through the validator again, no matter how small the change. Many of us have found that we got caught out as other webbies will check your page if they see that icon.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 11:13:04)

So it is perfectly normal for the message : "Sorry, this document cannot be checked." to appear when linked from my home page or any other page?



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 16:55:21)

No. I clicked the badge on your home page and it checked it and passed it. Sorry am I missing something?

The only time I've seen that message is if I've forgotten to put the doctype or encoding in the page.

This is the validation result for your homepage



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 17:22:15)

Perhaps it is me that is missing something:

<p>
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer"><img
src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401"
alt="Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional" height="31" width="88"></a>
</p>

Is a link to the page validated supposed to be in there somewhere? Whenever I click the w3 icon, it links to "sorry, this page cannot be checked-no referer header found" message.

I have all pages that I want validated, this would be the only thing to correct, besides checking in multiple browsers.

Thanks!



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 19:35:24)

quote:

a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer"
is the bit that says validate this page. It applies to whatever page THIS page is ie. whatever page the link is on.

As to invalid referrer, that usually means you are going in via an odd url.

I just clicked the link in your sig to take me to your site. On your homepage I clicked the logo at the bottom and got the valid page. Then I went to your about page and did the same and also got the valid page info back.

Where are you when you are clicking the logo? In the FP preview? It won't work from there.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/22/2007 19:40:50)

No, not from preview, in FP, from the website. It just directs to the error I mentioned, then one must click again, and enter the name of the site or page on the site to actually see if it validates. Clicking on the icon at the bottom of any page it is on, does not link to a page that says this site or this page is W3 compliant. I'm gathering you are not seeing the same thing I see?



Tailslide -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/23/2007 2:57:48)

Just leave the icon off - it doesn't serve a real purpose to be honest plus they're ugly.



jaybee -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/23/2007 5:44:29)

quote:

I'm gathering you are not seeing the same thing I see?
No, I see what I'm supposed to see.

Either leave it off as Tail says or try clicking the link in your sig to get to your site, then click the logo. See if it works then.



CavalierLady -> RE: W3 Validation? (12/23/2007 16:40:03)

Oh, thanks. I appreciate all the help.



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