HTML Validation why bother? - Page 2

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SKANK!!!!! 5 Posting Pro in Training · Answer 1 · 2009-11-11T19:27:13+00:00

http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/bat2001f.html
There is a precedent. They didnt follow the spec which made it non-screenreader friendly, thereby discriminating against the blind.

no hon im sorry. this isnt really right. they cant sue someone for not making a website unscreenreader friendly. they were selling tickets. thats a whole other thing. i think it was because the tickets were only avail online so it was discrimination or something. i dont believe that u can make everyone who has their own website make it screenreader freindly u cant force someone to make their website a certain way. its just a website. this was the olympics website that is like a huge business thing and i think it was just because they couldnt buy tickets online and there was no other way to do so. if not. then its a big error....

mm123 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 2 · 2009-11-11T19:44:13+00:00

<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
color:#444444;
font-family:verdana,geneva,lucida,'lucida grande',arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size:12px;
font-size-adjust:none;
font-style:normal;
font-variant:normal;
font-weight:normal;
line-height:20px;
}
div.smenu div {
	border-bottom:1px solid #ffffff;
	font-weight:bold;
	padding:5px;
	background-color:#deeef7;
	background-image:url(icon.jpg);
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	background-position: left center;
	padding-left:15px;
}
div.smenu div:hover, div#smenu div div:hover {
background-color:#E1E1E1;
background-image:url(icon1.jpg);
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	background-position: left center;
	color:#FF0000;
}
div.smenu div a:hover {
color:#000000;
}
div.smenu div a {
color:#ffffff;
display:block;
text-decoration:none;
}
-->
</style>

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jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster · Answer 3 · 2009-11-11T20:56:29+00:00

. i think it was because the tickets were only avail online so it was discrimination or something. i dont believe that u can make everyone who has their own website make it screenreader freindly u cant force someone to make their website a certain way

A website is just like a shop. If you dont provide a lift/ramp for your store, its the same as not making your site accessible.

If you read the report in full, youll see it has nothing to do with tickets. It was the incorrect use of tables, amongst other things, which interfered with the screenreaders ability to read out the scores for various events.

SKANK!!!!! 5 Posting Pro in Training · Answer 4 · 2009-11-12T01:36:21+00:00

A website is just like a shop. If you dont provide a lift/ramp for your store, its the same as not making your site accessible.
If you read the report in full, youll see it has nothing to do with tickets. It was the incorrect use of tables, amongst other things, which interfered with the screenreaders ability to read out the scores for various events.

you cant get sued for that.

Wrams 18 Newbie Poster · Answer 5 · 2009-11-12T02:28:50+00:00

Actually your wrong. The web site was built for ALL to view including blind people so by not making it screenreader friendly they where in breach of the terms and conditions of the "Olympic Standards Council" who oversee everything so that no-one is unable to view or read something that is designed for all.

Its not against the law to not provide a DOCTYPE its a recommendation of the Web Standards Consortium, W3C Validation. If your web site fails to supply the relevant data then your web site will suffer SEO wise if nothing else. Taking a view of its hard to understand is a wrong attitude to have because its not for you to understand its for search engine spiders/robots to read. Perhaps you should visit the W3C web site and read up abit before you pass it off as rubbish.

No-ones telling you what to do where just advising you what can and will probably happen. Take it or leave it.

I can't understand why you are asking for help in a help forums when your not prepared to take advise from members with many many years of experience. I'm not at the top of my game for no reason. I rank on the first page for my web development site in Google at number 4 in many different search terms. Also my web hosting company is also on the 2nd page after just 6 months of being online. If I took those DOCTYPE's away I would lose PR (Page Ranking) in a few weeks to maybe a page thats never viewed anymore, what does that tell you...?

Remember Google is your friend!! ;)

jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster · Answer 6 · 2009-11-12T02:36:14+00:00

you cant get sued for that.

yes you can

Actually, in the UK and most of the EU (not sure about US) it *is* actually illegal to do so (national law)

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml

SKANK!!!!! 5 Posting Pro in Training · Answer 7 · 2009-11-12T02:58:26+00:00

yes you can
Actually, in the UK and most of the EU (not sure about US) it *is* actually illegal to do so (national law)
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml

i read that they have been sued over discrimiation of blind people but where is the relations to getting sued for not having a doctype specified. isnt there like some default one it goes to for not having one? if that default thing whther it is quirks mode or not.. makes thins unreadble on screenreaders dont u think its the people that made this quirks mode up? that should be sued if anybody?

jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster · Answer 8 · 2009-11-12T03:27:36+00:00

Unlike WRAMS, Im not arguing the point for DOCTYPES, i am arguing for validation in general. If your site is not valid, it is is less likely to be screenreader-friendly.

Wrams 18 Newbie Poster · Answer 9 · 2009-11-12T04:47:25+00:00

I'm not argueing I'm simply stating a fact that no DOCTYPE bad SEO is all. ;)

Troy III 272 Posting Pro · Answer 10 · 2009-11-12T11:19:10+00:00

Doc-type has absolutely nothing to do with SEO!
You have to understand that DTD, - specified or omitted - can't affect SEs in any possible way; As web designers - we don't, and we cant optimize search engines, - SEO engineers do that!!!

Your doc-type, type of thing is completely irrelevant piece of junk when it comes to SE performance and efficiency, and while at it, -has no effect at all.

When it comes to accessibility;
Accessibility regulations are completely out of DTD scope, and there is no DTA(ccessible) Definition defined up to this day, and there wont be one in the future either. Because it is done within the code, and considering less than few existing accessibility features provided by actual html standard, it completely depends on the designers intellect and awareness; like when implementing nested menus; image based texts; links with no description; unnecessary image objects instead of background images as means to form their design etc,. which are all nothing but spoilers of the core reason, that the page was actually designed for - which is its content - its availability and accessibility by everyone, including blind deaf ill and in any other way, incapable people.

DTD tells your browser in what W3C mode to render your page- nothing else. And that's completely irrelevant to any other party except for W3C web development hegemony and dictatorship.

SKANK!!!!! 5 Posting Pro in Training · Answer 11 · 2009-11-12T13:39:56+00:00

Actually your wrong. The web site was built for ALL to view including blind people so by not making it screenreader friendly they where in breach of the terms and conditions of the "Olympic Standards Council" who oversee everything so that no-one is unable to view or read something that is designed for all.
Its not against the law to not provide a DOCTYPE its a recommendation of the Web Standards Consortium, W3C Validation. If your web site fails to supply the relevant data then your web site will suffer SEO wise if nothing else. Taking a view of its hard to understand is a wrong attitude to have because its not for you to understand its for search engine spiders/robots to read. Perhaps you should visit the W3C web site and read up abit before you pass it off as rubbish.
No-ones telling you what to do where just advising you what can and will probably happen. Take it or leave it.
I can't understand why you are asking for help in a help forums when your not prepared to take advise from members with many many years of experience. I'm not at the top of my game for no reason. I rank on the first page for my web development site in Google at number 4 in many different search terms. Also my web hosting company is also on the 2nd page after just 6 months of being online. If I took those DOCTYPE's away I would lose PR (Page Ranking) in a few weeks to maybe a page thats never viewed anymore, what does that tell you...?
Remember Google is your friend!! ;)

thanks for that information that it was somehthing that wasnt in compliance with the olimpic terms. yeah anyways. its hard to understnad for me, is not a bad attitude towards it because well i simply dont understand it. and i dont even know what seo is so why would i bother? and on another point, i always make my web pages simple so i can understand them, these things that are doctypes have no meaning to me. how am i supposed to chose one when they make no sense to me? therefor hard to understnad

MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster · Answer 12 · 2009-11-16T21:50:36+00:00

The purpose is to make sure that your pages keep working when browser upgrades occur. I learned this lesson the hard way, when half of my pages that used to work suddenly quit working right. I then had to rewrite the whole site. Changes in the way browsers interpret bad code were responsible.

If your code has no doctype or does not validate, then the browser has to try to figure out what the heck you intended to do. Different browsers use different methods to do that. Often they get lost when you have unclosed tags, and make a total mess of your page.

You do not have to write your own doctype line. Just copy the ones from the w3c site that matches the doctype you want to use.

ggeoff 4 Junior Poster- 72 years old :) · Answer 13 · 2009-11-16T22:23:29+00:00

Maybe not related, but food for thought. I have had a problem with a Frontpage 2002 website. I decided to add a Doctype and also a Meta statement to make the website run in IE7 compatibility mode.

The page lost functionality. On a copy of one page Frontpage crashed when the page is opened. I removed the emulate statement and had to mark several pages with Don't Publish. I also have one page where nearly two thousand blanks lines have been added! The content had not been wiped. On another page part of the page just went.

I can't be sure but I think my troubles started when I added the Doctype and the emulate statements. Frontpage webs don't use the doctype statement and I suppose there is a reason for this. I note that on using Preview mode there is reference to . . .IE5/6UQ which sounds as if the program uses IE5 and 6 to render the page.

Another of my Frontpage webs works fine and is regularly updated. Needless to say it has no Doctype statements.

Geoff

AycheKay 0 Light Poster · Answer 14 · 2009-11-16T22:31:32+00:00

Frontpage is extremely behind the times and does not use commonly accepted standards of today. For example, I don't think Frontpage uses CSS at all. I wouldn't recommend making any evaluations of correct standards based on Microsoft's software. IE is known to not follow standards and simply because something does or doesn't work in IE says nothing about what standards are correct. Just my two cents on that.

ggeoff 4 Junior Poster- 72 years old :) · Answer 15 · 2009-11-16T22:46:45+00:00

Frontpage is extremely behind the times and does not use commonly accepted standards of today. For example, I don't think Frontpage uses CSS at all. I wouldn't recommend making any evaluations of correct standards based on Microsoft's software. IE is known to not follow standards and simply because something does or doesn't work in IE says nothing about what standards are correct. Just my two cents on that.

Yes it is very old. I am using Expression Web 2 now. You can use CSS with Frontpage 2002 though. I have Lightbox installed. Incidentally Microsoft's home page www.microsoft.com fails to validate and gives over 200 errors and even rejects, as the last error, the Doctype!

The w3.org validator won't allow trying to validate it's own pages :)

geoff

AycheKay 0 Light Poster · Answer 16 · 2009-11-16T23:02:11+00:00

The w3.org validator won't allow trying to validate it's own pages :)

That seems kind of suspicious. I never tried that.

almostbob 866 Retired: passive income ROCKS · Answer 17 · 2009-11-17T00:55:56+00:00

The w3.org validator won't allow trying to validate it's own pages

That seems kind of suspicious. I never tried that

common sense,
what better way to DOS a site would there be than have it endlessly validating itself, so you exclude self references
same as most disable the current page from menus, coz its pointless

SKANK!!!!! 5 Posting Pro in Training · Answer 18 · 2009-11-17T06:17:42+00:00

well i had to use a doctype once for certain positioning on a big image( abunch of divs) cause it didnt work without the doctype. why i dont know... but all my other pages i dont add docs because well... i looked and looked and didnt understtand a thing i read on doctypes.

leahmarie 0 Junior Poster in Training · Answer 19 · 2009-11-17T12:40:30+00:00

For me, HTML Validator is necessary for your site's performance and usability. It is also good in Search engine rankings, if you have few errors.

Wrams 18 Newbie Poster · Answer 20 · 2009-11-17T15:36:30+00:00

If you want to validate W3C.org simply "View Source" and then "Copy/Paste" the code into the direct input box and submit for validation.

This should work as I have also had problems before trying to get pages of other websites to validate and get an error so all I do is the above and it works fine.

Hope this helps.

:)

ggeoff 4 Junior Poster- 72 years old :) · Answer 21 · 2009-11-17T18:20:22+00:00

If you want to validate W3C.org simply "View Source" and then "Copy/Paste" the code into the direct input box and submit for validation.
This should work as I have also had problems before trying to get pages of other websites to validate and get an error so all I do is the above and it works fine.
Hope this helps.
:)

Thanks Wrams, that's very useful info -they passed but with one warning.
Geoff

almostbob 866 Retired: passive income ROCKS · Answer 22 · 2009-11-17T19:37:20+00:00

"one warning" is always, for direct entered html, 'utf-8 assumed', just in case a non-translateable code is used