HTML Editor 2008 - Conforming

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If you can get this software to check all code against this site, and correct it so that it conforms, you will be heroes my friends!

http://tinyurl.com/2cpokk
Melissa Rhiannon
OS Windows 10
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2,138 posts

where to start....hmmm...
First, is this your web page or did you copy it from somewhere? The reason I ask about copying is that there is a lot of unseen characters on the web page, usually a result of copying code into another program.

You will need to get rid of that extra character problem, and that took me 15 minutes to do, and probably would take me an hour to explaing how to someone. :(

After that, most of the errors are due to faulty code. Look for lines like:
net/" www.coloradoprocessservers.net="" http:="">
You can't have ="" after a web address, or and empty http:="" statement at all. That goes nowhere, and is not valid code as represented in your doctype. It would also help to have a fully valid doctype. You have:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
That's not bad, but better to have:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Also, for almost all of your tables, you use the attribute height="". There is no acceptable "height" attribute for the table formatting in html.
Fix that wherever you find it, get rid of the
www.coloradoprocessservers.net="" http:="" section of your code links for images and any other links and you will find that you are close to getting your page validated. It will still take a little work, and honestly, it's not always worth messing up your web page just for the sake of getting it to validate.......
I'm positive I will take some heat for that last statement...it's just my opinion so please don't you all bash me too hard for it. :P
E-Learning Specialist
www.mainsites.ca is my website, and yes, some of it is crappy.
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Melissa,

Tidy is a great help to folks writing web sites.

I use Firefox with an addon called HTML Validator, which actually uses Tidy. When I view the code using that program, it not only takes me directly to the error, but it tells me why that part of the code is wrong, with suggestions on how to fix it for most errors.

It is a wonderful feeling when you first get the green check from the program telling you that things are working properly.

Once you have the code in view with the errors displayed, using HTML editor to fix them is easy.

Another way to get a list of errors is to visit the W3C validation site at http://validator.w3.org/ and print out the list they provide, which includes the line numbers and helps to fix the errors.

Hope this helps.

To Cliff: How much grief do you want us to give you? :)
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887 posts

Cliff Main wrote:
where to start....hmmm...
First, is this your web page or did you copy it from somewhere? The reason I ask about copying is that there is a lot of unseen characters on the web page, usually a result of copying code into another program.

No, I designed this from scratch using HTML Editor 2007, and then upgrading to 2008. And then I ran the code cleaner, which may have been a mistake?

You will need to get rid of that extra character problem, and that took me 15 minutes to do, and probably would take me an hour to explaing how to someone. :(

Ok, well I guess all I have to do is go through and follow the suggestions of that validator.w3.org site. But the attraction of HTML Editor, for me, being very basic in this, was to be able to use the Visual tab to design, and have it do the code right for me.

But I suppose this is a great opportunity to learn.

After that, most of the errors are due to faulty code. Look for lines like:
net/" www.coloradoprocessservers.net="" http:="">
You can't have ="" after a web address, or and empty http:="" statement at all. That goes nowhere, and is not valid code as represented in your doctype.

I didn't do it though, I designed the whole thing in HTML Editor 2007, upgraded to 2008, and then ran the cleanup thingie too. I thought it would fix everything up for me.

People here talk like I did this all myself, when I just used the Visual designer in there.

It would also help to have a fully valid doctype. You have:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
That's not bad, but better to have:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Again, the program did it all for me. I swear.

Also, for almost all of your tables, you use the attribute height="". There is no acceptable "height" attribute for the table formatting in html.
Fix that wherever you find it, get rid of the
www.coloradoprocessservers.net="" http:="" section of your code links for images and any other links and you will find that you are close to getting your page validated. It will still take a little work, and honestly, it's not always worth messing up your web page just for the sake of getting it to validate.......
I'm positive I will take some heat for that last statement...it's just my opinion so please don't you all bash me too hard for it. :P

How would I know? :)
Melissa Rhiannon
OS Windows 10
User 404575 Photo


Registered User
887 posts

billr wrote:
Melissa,

Tidy is a great help to folks writing web sites.

I use Firefox with an addon called HTML Validator, which actually uses Tidy. When I view the code using that program, it not only takes me directly to the error, but it tells me why that part of the code is wrong, with suggestions on how to fix it for most errors.

It is a wonderful feeling when you first get the green check from the program telling you that things are working properly.

Once you have the code in view with the errors displayed, using HTML editor to fix them is easy.

Another way to get a list of errors is to visit the W3C validation site at http://validator.w3.org/ and print out the list they provide, which includes the line numbers and helps to fix the errors.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Bill.

I didn't have Firefox on my computer lately but downloaded the latest and installed it, then got the Tidy HTML Validator for it and tried it.

But Firefox is doing weird things on me, which is why I deleted it before, a long time ago. When it opens up, it hangs on the first page for awhile ( even Google ) and then says it has an error running a script.

Anyway, I tried the HTML Validator in there and it seems to have reduced my errors from about 33 to around 10 now, while removing all my menu links that I had before.

And with the remaining errors, I gotta admit that I don't know enough about coding and am stumped now.
Melissa Rhiannon
OS Windows 10
User 37670 Photo


Registered User
2,138 posts

Melissa wrote:
I didn't do it though, I designed the whole thing in HTML Editor 2007, upgraded to 2008, and then ran the cleanup thingie too. I thought it would fix everything up for me.

People here talk like I did this all myself, when I just used the Visual designer in there.

When you say you designed it in html 2007, I assumed you used the code editor. Then you say you used the visual designer section....ok there is the problem. The visual designer will create different code than the code editor to accomplish the same tasks. When you ran the code thru the code cleaner, it tried to fix what it might of thought was "bad" code, because the visual designer tries really hard to code things where you want to put it, so the code might not be as "clean" as it could be.

Without knowing much about the html code, I can now see why it would be so difficult to clean up the code based on suggestions from w3c.

I will try to explain what I mean when I said there were "extra characters". That might have been missleading. When you ran the code cleaner, it somehow replaces some items that are not valid in your web page, using the doctype and charset values. Sometimes these are blank spaces or ' or - things like that that are not part of what a validator will accept. Replacing those by typing it into the code of the page fixes them. The best way I can show you is if you do this:
Go to your web page
Bring your mouse cursor to the top left of your web page
Left click and drag your mouse accross and down on the top few inches of your page.
Notice the blue highlighted areas that are either on the far left of the page, or the small blue rectangle that appears around the lette "E" of the word "SERVERS"? The cursor is trying to highlight things you can't see in the web page. You might have to try this a couple of times before you see the effect.

I now understand that it is not you who did the code, and that does help explain why it happened. That's why I asked of you copied and pasted the code into the page, because it has the same effect. This is not something that can be fixed using the visual editor tab.
E-Learning Specialist
www.mainsites.ca is my website, and yes, some of it is crappy.
User 404575 Photo


Registered User
887 posts

Cliff Main wrote:
Melissa wrote:
I didn't do it though, I designed the whole thing in HTML Editor 2007, upgraded to 2008, and then ran the cleanup thingie too. I thought it would fix everything up for me.

People here talk like I did this all myself, when I just used the Visual designer in there.

When you say you designed it in html 2007, I assumed you used the code editor.

No, I designed it from scratch using the visual part of HTML Editor 2007, then upgraded to the 2008 pre-release.

I'm not knowledgeable enough with HTML to do the code myself, that's why I needed the visual interface. In fact I started out using VSD but it couldn't do tables for me, like the new menu I designed in HTML Editor.

But if it wasn't for the visual part of HTML Editor, I wouldn't be able to do this at all.

Then you say you used the visual designer section....ok there is the problem. The visual designer will create different code than the code editor to accomplish the same tasks. When you ran the code thru the code cleaner, it tried to fix what it might of thought was "bad" code, because the visual designer tries really hard to code things where you want to put it, so the code might not be as "clean" as it could be.

Without knowing much about the html code, I can now see why it would be so difficult to clean up the code based on suggestions from w3c.

Oh yeah. And my site looks totally different in Microsoft Internet Explorer than it does in Seamonkey, which may be because of the bad code.

When I bought this, I was hoping that I could design stuff using the visual part, then have it write the correct code for me, that would be fine with W3C. That would be the ideal thing for someone like me. I'm a process server, not a web designer, but I can't afford to pay someone $5000 to design my site for me, I have to do it myself. :)

I will try to explain what I mean when I said there were "extra characters". That might have been missleading. When you ran the code cleaner, it somehow replaces some items that are not valid in your web page, using the doctype and charset values. Sometimes these are blank spaces or ' or - things like that that are not part of what a validator will accept. Replacing those by typing it into the code of the page fixes them. The best way I can show you is if you do this:
Go to your web page
Bring your mouse cursor to the top left of your web page
Left click and drag your mouse accross and down on the top few inches of your page.
Notice the blue highlighted areas that are either on the far left of the page, or the small blue rectangle that appears around the lette "E" of the word "SERVERS"? The cursor is trying to highlight things you can't see in the web page. You might have to try this a couple of times before you see the effect.

I now understand that it is not you who did the code, and that does help explain why it happened. That's why I asked if you copied and pasted the code into the page, because it has the same effect. This is not something that can be fixed using the visual editor tab.

Ok, I see.

Well I don't know quite what to do now. I have to design the stuff myself, can't afford to hire anyone, yet I need to be able to learn to fix the errors.

One of the big ones is the Character Encoding call-out, which HTML Editor does automatically, but apparently isn't seen right by various browsers and doesn't pass W3C right.
Melissa Rhiannon
OS Windows 10
User 37670 Photo


Registered User
2,138 posts

Quick question for you...

If you get the website to work and look the way you want it to, why the need for w3c validation? Yes it can help, but to be honest, just because a site validates does not guarantee that browsers will display it the same. There will always be a browser that throws a monkey wrench into a perfectly good website, not matter how strict the code.

You are ahead of many who try to build their own websites. Yours works, the links and images are in place and it looks fine. You have an understanding that there is "valid" code and that's a great start. Maybe less validating will still give you a site that is more functional?

The web design tools can put a doctype in place, but the tools have no idea what standards the designer will follow, so there is no way for the web program to always get the correct doctype. It starts with the most common and forgiving doctype, but it is up to the web developer to choose a better one if they feel they can improve their web page with it. Most web pages will work relatively well with the standard doctype that coffeecup tools use.
E-Learning Specialist
www.mainsites.ca is my website, and yes, some of it is crappy.
User 404575 Photo


Registered User
887 posts

Cliff Main wrote:
Quick question for you...

If you get the website to work and look the way you want it to, why the need for w3c validation? Yes it can help, but to be honest, just because a site validates does not guarantee that browsers will display it the same. There will always be a browser that throws a monkey wrench into a perfectly good website, not matter how strict the code.

Hmm, ok, but right now my Seamonkey is showing overlapped tables on my main page at http://www.coloradoprocessservers.net and question marks along the left edge. It's a mess. I figure that if I can get it to pass validation, then I'll have a chance?

You are ahead of many who try to build their own websites. Yours works, the links and images are in place and it looks fine. You have an understanding that there is "valid" code and that's a great start. Maybe less validating will still give you a site that is more functional?

The web design tools can put a doctype in place, but the tools have no idea what standards the designer will follow, so there is no way for the web program to always get the correct doctype. It starts with the most common and forgiving doctype, but it is up to the web developer to choose a better one if they feel they can improve their web page with it. Most web pages will work relatively well with the standard doctype that coffeecup tools use.

What character code should I put in there? Is there a standard that HTML Editor writes the code with?

I removed it entirely this last time, as it was a mess.
Melissa Rhiannon
OS Windows 10

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