Validation

**Sliight** · 07-23-2007, 06:41 PM

ACK! @*&#&!!

So I went to that w3.org validator and found umpteen million errors.

I still have no idea what 4.01 strict, transitional, or other things really mean.

I also didn't realize I had to have meta tags which break down what the page is.

Could someone peek at my source, http://www.usejeff.com and recommend the best thing for the declaration (or whatever it's called) at the top, and possibly some meta tags as well?

I'm not using any front page components at all, I'm just using FP for the HTML editor and publishing to the web.

I'm going to go look for a meta tags tutorial and see if I can figure out what they are for. I used to just think it was a search engine thing.

Thanks!

**Twey** · 07-23-2007, 07:13 PM

You want HTML 4.01 Strict, which is the latest well-supported DOCTYPE. The declaration is

Code:

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

I also didn't realize I had to have meta tags which break down what the page is.

You don't. I think you've misunderstood something.

I'm not using any front page components at all, I'm just using FP for the HTML editor and publishing to the web.

I strongly doubt if you'll ever be able to get a valid page using FrontPage.

**Sliight** · 07-23-2007, 07:56 PM

Initially I received an error from the validation service stating that it couldn't read my encoding. I added the meta tags front page typically adds, and then it went ahead and read the page.

Oddly enough though, I'm getting errors from a lot of things that appear correct to me.

I guess I'll look for a new HTML editor with publishing ability other than FP, although FP doesn't seem to ever alter any code that I input. I only use the HTML editor.

I'll do some more reading and see if I can figure out why I'm getting issues. The good news is, at least everything appears correctly on the 4 major browsers.

Thank you Twey,

**Twey** · 07-23-2007, 09:28 PM

I only use the HTML editor.

You mean a plain text editor? That should be OK, I wasn't aware FP possessed one.

Oddly enough though, I'm getting errors from a lot of things that appear correct to me.

The validator rather has the last say, since it validates against the DOCTYPE in question

Initially I received an error from the validation service stating that it couldn't read my encoding. I added the meta tags front page typically adds, and then it went ahead and read the page.

Read this thread (the whole thread, not just the first post).

**Sliight** · 07-24-2007, 07:28 AM

Thank you will do... it will be a nice break from trying to figure out why the stinking Safari browser will no longer highlight on hover, after it was fixed! Grrr @*#&#@& Safari...

**Sliight** · 07-24-2007, 07:36 AM

"Setting the character set using <meta> tags is thus a very inflexible and unreliable practice, and configuring your server to send the correct encoding in the Content-Type header is vastly preferable."

So that all sorta makes sense, although I'm not positive how it applies to me. Do I presume correctly that the "Content-type header" is the <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" I see on top of pages? Is the EN essentially what means english characters?

I tell ya what... when I was 10, learning was ANNOYING, especially when I should be playing baseball. When I was 16 learning was kinda cool, but the college girls were better to focus on in class... now that I'm 33 I'm like a freakin sponge. Love learning everything. I really appreciate your help Twey, and I hope I'm more of a sponge, than a leech for information.

Thank you,

**Twey** · 07-24-2007, 03:04 PM

So that all sorta makes sense, although I'm not positive how it applies to me. Do I presume correctly that the "Content-type header" is the <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" I see on top of pages? Is the EN essentially what means english characters?

No. That's a DOCTYPE -- it's a required directive that tells the browser (or other HTML/SGML parser) how the document should be structured, by pointing it to a Document Type Definition (DTD) such as the one at http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd. This is essentially the definition of HTML, or the structure of it at least.

Headers (not the head of a document, which is quite a different thing) are not defined within the page. They're plain text, but they're sent by the server before the page. Try it: telnet into a webserver and issue a GET command yourself:

Code:

$ telnet www.google.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: google.com
Connection: close
(blank line)

You should get back a response from the server: first a bunch of headers (including Content-Type) and then the page itself. This is what a browser does when retrieving a page.

I tell ya what... when I was 10, learning was ANNOYING, especially when I should be playing baseball. When I was 16 learning was kinda cool, but the college girls were better to focus on in class... now that I'm 33 I'm like a freakin sponge.

Heh, I hear you, although I think it's more to do with what you're learning

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