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Why are the forums not passing the W3C Guidlines? RRS feed

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    Just to see what would happen, I ran the forum pages (including this one) with W3C's markup validation - and it came up with roughly 140 errors per page - as well as stating in bold lettering: "THIS PAGE IS NOT VALID XHTML 1.0 TRANSITIONAL!"

    Example:

    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.expression.microsoft.com%2Fen-US%2Fsuggest%2Fthreads%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0

    Maybe this is why you guys are getting so many bugs, huh?

    (And I'd hate to tell you how many errors silverlight.net has...)

    I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not... (but at least you are now!)
    Take a chance. Prepare to be surprised.
    • Edited by Oliver Black Tuesday, August 5, 2008 3:36 AM Typo
    Tuesday, August 5, 2008 3:34 AM

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    W3C has slept for several years. They are responsible for the total mess with HTML today, because they have not been able to follow the development. Just look at CSS and various script languages. Everything has its own syntax and nothing fits together. You can't blame anybody for not taking W3C serious. It is like Linux - some nerds trying to make a standard out of something, which was obsolete many years ago.

    Microsoft is the only company in the world big enough to do something about it, but unfortunately they don't do that either.
    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
    Wednesday, August 6, 2008 7:26 AM
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    So... you're saying that the only "standards" for web developers is obsolete?

    Then the Expression Studio 2 (which labels Expression Web 'as standards-complaint to W3C standards) is promoting a false product?
    Take a chance. Prepare to be surprised.
    Wednesday, August 6, 2008 4:08 PM
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    There are several factors at work here, and we've doe our best to comply with standards. But when we had to choose between standards compliance and ACTUALLY working properly in the browsers, we chose the browser.

    Also of note: most of the actual content of the Forums pages is rendered using the DOM in Javascript. None of that (likely valid, since we're using the DOM) code is being validated by that validator. All it validating is the chrome aroud the page (mainly the header) which is shared across the entire Social Platform.
    Matt Fraser, STO Forums Software Developer
    Wednesday, August 6, 2008 4:55 PM
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    That's your choice, I suppose. 
    Take a chance. Prepare to be surprised.
    Wednesday, August 6, 2008 6:12 PM
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    "So... you're saying that the only "standards" for web developers is obsolete? "

    Basically, yes!

    There are standards and de-facto standards. The problem with standards is that they very often are not able to follow the technical development. Therefore vendors are forced to add their own extensions like various mouse-over functions, Flash movies etc. This has sacrificed the safety, but W3C has done absolutely nothing for at least 10 years and don't seem to do anything in the future so unless we should be left in the stone age somebody has to take over. Just a pity that Microsoft has not taken a better lead.

    The way Firefox and especially IE shows web pages is the de-facto standard, which everybody need to follow. I have previously used Opera, but even though it may be more compatible with the W3C standard, it didn't show the pages the way the other browsers do, so I had to ship it.
    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
    Friday, August 8, 2008 9:37 AM
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    Well, I guess I might go telling everything in the Expression Web forums that - and see what they think.
    Friday, August 8, 2008 4:33 PM
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    While I don't disagree with some of what you are saying (it is very challenging to get all browsers to render the same and be w3c compliant). With IE8 coming around the bend rendering pages in full w3c compliance mode out-of-the-box, and firefox doing the same... the winds of change could be blowing.
    Randy Drisgill | The Mossman Blog | SharePoint Branding Services
    Saturday, August 9, 2008 8:07 PM
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    Carste:

    I am not a web developer, so I do not really know if W3C is out of step with the realities of creating dynamic content on modern browsers.

    What I do know is that many of the reported errors on these MSDN forum pages are elementary XHTML errors (non-lower-case tags or attributes, missing attributes, use of tags in wrong context, using obsolete tags, missing encoding of &'s ....). Surely these things could be fixed without causing the pages to display improperly?

    Maybe this is a bad analogy, but it seems to me a lot like C++. I have a lot of code still using VC6. Whenever I try to compile this code on later versions of Visual C++, I find compiler errors, because the new compiler has better standards compliance. However, in my experience it is always possible to fix the code so that it compiles and runs correctly both on VC6 and the newer compiler. VC6 does not require non-standard code; it just allows it.
    David Wilkinson | Visual C++ MVP
    Monday, August 11, 2008 12:55 PM
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    Yeah, it's hard to believe that all 140 errors would compromise total browser compatibility...
    Monday, August 11, 2008 4:16 PM
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    Well, when glancing through that report, I saw some "clusters" of errors. I believe in one instance there were 5-6 errors logged for the exact same piece of HTML. May of the errors were for missing ALT tags (and yes, I realize that should likely be fixed, but I'm pretty sure the images missing ALT tags were on decorative images)

    I don't believe there to be 140 actual errors, especially when you consider the small amount of HTML that was actually validated.

    Matt

    Matt Fraser, STO Forums Software Developer
    Monday, August 11, 2008 5:09 PM
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    Matt:

    Yes, sometimes a single mistake will create a cascade of errors.

    Great! Should be easy to get the count down then.

    David Wilkinson | Visual C++ MVP
    Monday, August 11, 2008 5:36 PM
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    Well, at least you're aware of them now! :-)
    Tuesday, August 12, 2008 4:13 PM
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    I've been hoping someone from MS would help....

    I spent this evening using Expression Web Design 4

    Working on 9 corp/npo images, made them larger, filled the background, but the graphic designer I just lost, has white around two of the images, a layout from their company software.

    I added these to FrontPage in a sub domain, then to the main file

    I found numerous persons/users online that still feel FrontPage is the best and still OK, I know for a fact, it won't be around much longer, has the servers stop removing its capabilities

    One of Aunts died tonight, this gave me something to do.......

    Tomorrow, I will work on Expression

    Still hoping someone will want to help and make some income

    Thanks for your help!

    Have a great, warm, quite, wonderful Christmas Holiday!

     

    These two guides will help; I can read/study and start the change over from 10 years of FrontPage work to Expression

    I really appreciate your help!!!

    Marshall 360-336-3057 PST USA North of Seattle

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    Marshall F. Shield CEO/Chairman Founder*Principle My Shield Corp, My Family Shield NPO & Fantasia Productions corp@myshield.us Hiring thousands after we start!
    Monday, December 20, 2010 7:03 PM