Do you use valid HTML?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
9,448
1
76
Originally posted by: Antisocial-Virge
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I test on IE, Mozilla, and Opera....sometimes I'll throw in Netscape.

amish
My brother-in-law still uses Netscape. He has used it since the mid 90's and cant get away from it, and he is computer savvy. Strange, but true.

EDIT: And it is Netscape that refuses to conform to the standards...


I always heard it was IE that was not following the standards.
There are standards put out and netscape does not follow them. <blink> WTF is that all about?? http://www.w3w.org should explain everything for you.

As far as IE, that is the standard and it does comply with the w3w standards. Netscape does not comply, and it is to their own detriment.
 

notfred

Lifer
Feb 12, 2001
38,241
4
0
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Antisocial-Virge
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I test on IE, Mozilla, and Opera....sometimes I'll throw in Netscape.

amish
My brother-in-law still uses Netscape. He has used it since the mid 90's and cant get away from it, and he is computer savvy. Strange, but true.

EDIT: And it is Netscape that refuses to conform to the standards...


I always heard it was IE that was not following the standards.
There are standards put out and netscape does not follow them. <blink> WTF is that all about?? http://www.w3w.org should explain everything for you.

As far as IE, that is the standard and it does comply with the w3w standards. Netscape does not comply, and it is to their own detriment.

The "blink" tag did not violate any HTML standards.
 

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
9,448
1
76
I should have added that some browsers dont close tags on their own.

If you put a tag, and don't follow it with the </> tag, it screws everything else up. Some browsers understand that and "close" the tag on their own so the page renders correctly.

For now, if you don't close the tag, you are sloppy. In a few years it may be the standard not to have to close it, but for now it is. Bottom line is, you should know how to write it correctly, it's just not that hard. HTML has very few tags, and you should know how to use them if you write pages.

I just want to add that although IE conforms, Frontpage is the DEVIL. ;)
 

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
9,448
1
76
Originally posted by: notfred
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Antisocial-Virge
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I test on IE, Mozilla, and Opera....sometimes I'll throw in Netscape.

amish
My brother-in-law still uses Netscape. He has used it since the mid 90's and cant get away from it, and he is computer savvy. Strange, but true.

EDIT: And it is Netscape that refuses to conform to the standards...


I always heard it was IE that was not following the standards.
There are standards put out and netscape does not follow them. <blink> WTF is that all about?? http://www.w3w.org should explain everything for you.

As far as IE, that is the standard and it does comply with the w3w standards. Netscape does not comply, and it is to their own detriment.

The "blink" tag did not violate any HTML standards.
It is only recognized by netscape, and it is the WORST tag ever.

 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Antisocial-Virge
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I test on IE, Mozilla, and Opera....sometimes I'll throw in Netscape.

amish
My brother-in-law still uses Netscape. He has used it since the mid 90's and cant get away from it, and he is computer savvy. Strange, but true.

EDIT: And it is Netscape that refuses to conform to the standards...


I always heard it was IE that was not following the standards.
There are standards put out and netscape does not follow them. <blink> WTF is that all about?? http://www.w3w.org should explain everything for you.

As far as IE, that is the standard and it does comply with the w3w standards. Netscape does not comply, and it is to their own detriment.

Mozilla complies with the standards as well or better than IE. That is how AOL gets their netscape builds.

BTW, most of my code isnt too far off so far. Working on validating the rest. Shouldnt be too bad since its very basic.
 

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
9,448
1
76
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Antisocial-Virge
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I test on IE, Mozilla, and Opera....sometimes I'll throw in Netscape.

amish
My brother-in-law still uses Netscape. He has used it since the mid 90's and cant get away from it, and he is computer savvy. Strange, but true.

EDIT: And it is Netscape that refuses to conform to the standards...


I always heard it was IE that was not following the standards.
There are standards put out and netscape does not follow them. <blink> WTF is that all about?? http://www.w3w.org should explain everything for you.

As far as IE, that is the standard and it does comply with the w3w standards. Netscape does not comply, and it is to their own detriment.

Mozilla complies with the standards as well or better than IE. That is how AOL gets their netscape builds.

BTW, most of my code isnt too far off so far. Working on validating the rest. Shouldnt be too bad since its very basic.
I was only bashing Netscape. I used to like them many years ago, but they tried to do things their own way. I use IE for compatability, not preference.
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Antisocial-Virge
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I test on IE, Mozilla, and Opera....sometimes I'll throw in Netscape.

amish
My brother-in-law still uses Netscape. He has used it since the mid 90's and cant get away from it, and he is computer savvy. Strange, but true.

EDIT: And it is Netscape that refuses to conform to the standards...


I always heard it was IE that was not following the standards.
There are standards put out and netscape does not follow them. <blink> WTF is that all about?? http://www.w3w.org should explain everything for you.

As far as IE, that is the standard and it does comply with the w3w standards. Netscape does not comply, and it is to their own detriment.

Mozilla complies with the standards as well or better than IE. That is how AOL gets their netscape builds.

BTW, most of my code isnt too far off so far. Working on validating the rest. Shouldnt be too bad since its very basic.
I was only bashing Netscape. I used to like them many years ago, but they tried to do things their own way. I use IE for compatability, not preference.

Netscape is a bundled version of Mozilla now. If you are talking about 4.7x I can understand, but some people dont actually have much of a choice.
 

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
9,448
1
76
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Antisocial-Virge
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I test on IE, Mozilla, and Opera....sometimes I'll throw in Netscape.

amish
My brother-in-law still uses Netscape. He has used it since the mid 90's and cant get away from it, and he is computer savvy. Strange, but true.

EDIT: And it is Netscape that refuses to conform to the standards...


I always heard it was IE that was not following the standards.
There are standards put out and netscape does not follow them. <blink> WTF is that all about?? http://www.w3w.org should explain everything for you.

As far as IE, that is the standard and it does comply with the w3w standards. Netscape does not comply, and it is to their own detriment.

Mozilla complies with the standards as well or better than IE. That is how AOL gets their netscape builds.

BTW, most of my code isnt too far off so far. Working on validating the rest. Shouldnt be too bad since its very basic.
I was only bashing Netscape. I used to like them many years ago, but they tried to do things their own way. I use IE for compatability, not preference.

Netscape is a bundled version of Mozilla now. If you are talking about 4.7x I can understand, but some people dont actually have much of a choice.
Trust me, there are people using some very old versions of Netscape out there...

 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Originally posted by: 911paramedic
Trust me, there are people using some very old versions of Netscape out there...

Thats what I meant by some of us not having a choice. When I used OpenBSD as my desktop, Netscape 4.7? was my only choice until the Linux version of Opera appeared in the ports tree. If I run OpenBSD as a "desktop" on my Ultra, I will probably have to use Netscape, but Im not positive.
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Im checking most of my site's pages now, and if I put in a Fusetalk URL I get an error.

# Line 15, column 76: cannot generate system identifier for general entity "threadid"

<a href="http://www.host.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=2&threadid=513658#1902121">

Of course there is no explanation for this one. Without digging around and whatnot, anyone know off the top of their head how to do this correctly?
 

Bullhonkie

Golden Member
Sep 28, 2001
1,899
0
76
Originally posted by: nord1899

When you have 90+% of the market, you get to make the standards.

Anyways, both IE and Netscape 4.x were horrible at following the standards. Opera is probably the best at following it. Mozilla is pretty damn close.

Netscape 4.x and IE prior to 5 were pretty bad, but back in those browser war days no one really cared that much about the W3C and the competing companies were only interested in adding more proprietary features/tags/implementations to 'one-up' the other browser. Repeat after me: Proprietary features are a bad thing.

I actually find Opera to be pretty iffy still (even with its version 7 release), at least as far as CSS2 implementation goes. It's rather unpredictable at times in its implementation, and that's never a good thing with a browser. They claim to have gotten better with their DOM implementation but there are still a number of complaints out there about issues that haven't been resolved. They've come a long way though, and every release since version 5 has had substantial improvements.

The Gecko-based browsers are doing well. They still differ from IE and Opera in their implementation in some areas, but the implementations are still technically standards-compliant if you dig deep enough into what the W3C defines in some of its DTDs.

A lot of people have the misconception that IE is the 'most' standards-compliant. Although it is good in its implementation, it's also a very lax and forgiving browser (meaning it will attempt to spit out and render hemorrhaged code rather well). Which in this day and age of sloppy coders and users who export things from MS Word as HTML, isn't necessarily a bad thing heh.
 

Bullhonkie

Golden Member
Sep 28, 2001
1,899
0
76
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Im checking most of my site's pages now, and if I put in a Fusetalk URL I get an error.

# Line 15, column 76: cannot generate system identifier for general entity "threadid"

<a href="http://www.host.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=2&threadid=513658#1902121">

Of course there is no explanation for this one. Without digging around and whatnot, anyone know off the top of their head how to do this correctly?

You need to replace the ampersands with their equivalent entity code/number. HTML Entities Reference

Edit: Corrected link.
 

Beau

Lifer
Jun 25, 2001
17,730
0
76
www.beauscott.com
Originally posted by: Bullhonkie
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Im checking most of my site's pages now, and if I put in a Fusetalk URL I get an error.

# Line 15, column 76: cannot generate system identifier for general entity "threadid"

<a href="http://www.host.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=2&threadid=513658#1902121">

Of course there is no explanation for this one. Without digging around and whatnot, anyone know off the top of their head how to do this correctly?

You need to replace the ampersands with their equivalent entity code/number. HTML Entities Reference

Edit: Corrected link.

The ampersands are part of a querystring in a hyperlink, separating field values. If you change them to & amp; then the link won't work.
 

notfred

Lifer
Feb 12, 2001
38,241
4
0
Originally posted by: Beau
The ampersands are part of a querystring in a hyperlink, separating field values. If you change them to & amp; then the link won't work.

Yes they will.
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Originally posted by: notfred
Originally posted by: Beau
The ampersands are part of a querystring in a hyperlink, separating field values. If you change them to & amp; then the link won't work.

Yes they will.

If I include the space in there < a href="http://www.host.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=2&
threadid=513658#1902121">
, there is a space in the link. If I do not include the space it shows up as &ampthread which does not appear to work.

EDIT: I needed to put &thread and it works.

Thanks everyone! :D
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Originally posted by: Beau
Originally posted by: notfred
Originally posted by: Beau
The ampersands are part of a querystring in a hyperlink, separating field values. If you change them to & amp; then the link won't work.

Yes they will.

well what'dya know, it does work. Just don't forget your semicolon. I thought for sure that would have interfered with the URL. :confused.

It definitely does without the semicolon :p
 

Beau

Lifer
Jun 25, 2001
17,730
0
76
www.beauscott.com
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: Beau
Originally posted by: notfred
Originally posted by: Beau
The ampersands are part of a querystring in a hyperlink, separating field values. If you change them to & amp; then the link won't work.

Yes they will.

well what'dya know, it does work. Just don't forget your semicolon. I thought for sure that would have interfered with the URL. :confused.

It definitely does without the semicolon :p

Yep.

Still thought it would have gone against the RFC 1738 and RFC 2396 specs. I always thought that you treat URL's as a different language, not HTML, IE spaces in HTML & nbsp; and in URLs %20. Same character, different applications. Oh well. Ya learn something new everyday.
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
0
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Originally posted by: Jellomancer
It's IE that makes up for coders not following standards.
And you know what? AWESOME! It works fine this way anyway. HTML standards are obviously too strict since a person doesn't have to conform strictly and IE is smart enough to interpret their lax code and deliver the site as they hoped.

What happened if you didn't have a standard C-syntax?
 

Beau

Lifer
Jun 25, 2001
17,730
0
76
www.beauscott.com
Originally posted by: ndee
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Originally posted by: Jellomancer
It's IE that makes up for coders not following standards.
And you know what? AWESOME! It works fine this way anyway. HTML standards are obviously too strict since a person doesn't have to conform strictly and IE is smart enough to interpret their lax code and deliver the site as they hoped.

What happened if you didn't have a standard C-syntax?

Hey, windows still works, doesn't it? :D:p
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
0
Originally posted by: Beau
Originally posted by: ndee
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Originally posted by: Jellomancer
It's IE that makes up for coders not following standards.
And you know what? AWESOME! It works fine this way anyway. HTML standards are obviously too strict since a person doesn't have to conform strictly and IE is smart enough to interpret their lax code and deliver the site as they hoped.

What happened if you didn't have a standard C-syntax?

Hey, windows still works, doesn't it? :D:p

aaaaaaaaahm...... no comment :p
 

yoda291

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2001
5,079
0
0
Originally posted by: ndee
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Originally posted by: Jellomancer
It's IE that makes up for coders not following standards.
And you know what? AWESOME! It works fine this way anyway. HTML standards are obviously too strict since a person doesn't have to conform strictly and IE is smart enough to interpret their lax code and deliver the site as they hoped.

What happened if you didn't have a standard C-syntax?

open source would be a far different thing.


I check for compatibility in most browsers, but I find that in the time it takes me to write an application that is secure, works quickly, AND generates compliant code, I could have coded 3 scripts that are secure and work quickly. I hate to say it, but in web development, speed is king, then you go back and revise like nuts once the supervisor leaves.

people are lying. 90% of the "web developers" I come across never check thier code in anything but IE on windows, and possibly mozilla in windows.

Well, you also have to keep in mind that 50% of "web developers" give themself that title once they learn frontpage :)
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
0
Originally posted by: yoda291
Originally posted by: ndee
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Originally posted by: Jellomancer
It's IE that makes up for coders not following standards.
And you know what? AWESOME! It works fine this way anyway. HTML standards are obviously too strict since a person doesn't have to conform strictly and IE is smart enough to interpret their lax code and deliver the site as they hoped.

What happened if you didn't have a standard C-syntax?

open source would be a far different thing.

That's my point.

 

dman

Diamond Member
Nov 2, 1999
9,110
0
76
I just use frontpage for my simple =crap stuff.

I stopped using netscape because it kept crashing. That was back in 4.6x days. Nowadays I use crazybrowser shell on IE 6.1. I've tried mozilla but I've got no reason to switch back at this point.