w3c or not w3c. That is the question?

[motorwatchercounter]

Hi all,

Bored again so I thought I would start a thread on web code validation.

Is it a legal requirement? Is it required? Is it beneficial? Is it just a ploy? What is the impact if you use free (or paid for) programs not validated? Will you be invited to the w3c Christmas party?

I know the forum has its champions but one of the best things about the web is that you can research whilst having a cup of tea and a ciggie. If you are interested in the subject, please have a look at the following site. A little old but still readable;

http://www.simonstl.com/articles/civilw3c.htm#whyjoin

Should I create my own linked logo, charge you cash and say you are OK (in my opinion) and then let you advertise me by letting you use my linked logo?

[webado]

Legal requierment? Surely you jest.

Since when is the web so concerned about legal anyhting? How about going after the crooks and the frauds and the eveil-doers on the web first before enforcing strict comformity to what is often just a set of arbitrary rules designed to make work more than anything else?

Oh, but wait, I think I get it. The scum will now write code that is fully W3C compliant to better bilk us Nothing like a W3C compliant porno and gambling site and why not W3C compliant trojans also?

How about requiring backwards comaptibility from software releases as used to be the way until not long ago? Or has the web toally fallen prey to the disposable mentality?

It is one thing to add improvements and another to delomish and rebuild to totally new specs.

But of course we see nonsense like this in all walks of life. Our local government for instance, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed a couple of years ago that people's birth certificates issued in the past are no longer valid, therefore new ones have to be procured at great cost and effort. Presumably because it was difficult to spot forgeries. This however proved to be a smoke screen because all that was required was the filling out of a stupid form (but which you have to get first in the mail after calling and waiting on hold forever) and the payment of money and the waiting for a month or more to get it. No manner of verification performed, as far as i could tell. Fair enough they should start issuing new standardised ones to newly born kids, but rendering everybody else's invalid in one clean sweep is onerous. A birth certificate is by its nature not something that expires (pun intended). They did the same with marriage and death certifiates. Will wonders never cease?

[webado]

Hmmm, I admit I haven't considered all the different types of impairments that people may be afflicted with. But it depends a lot on what type of web site one has, doesn't it?

W3C does not valdiate content nor usability from what I've noticed anyway. Just the method of building the site. It picks on html constructs which have always worked just fine and demands they be replaced by other html constructs.

Ok, having alt tags for images and title tags for links makse sense. Defining the language or the character set makes sense. Many are recommendations for better coding.

Why do I have to replace <center> .... </center> with something else???? How is that better for the visually or hearing impaired?

Why can't the W3C ensure that all browsers adhere to a standard then? Ah, of course, which one should be the standard? I don't care, as long as we don't have this nonsense that this works in IE but not in Netscape or Firefox of Konkeror or whatever. Such and such thing works in Firefox but not in IE. And on and on.

Why should I have to cater to every darn browser and OS that has its own set of bugs?

[Nomad]

The reason why the atributes were/are being moved to css (and 'Forms') are being worked on now is so the software that the disabled use especially the software used for reading the 'Text" doesn't read this garbage as well;
Example:

<td bgcolor="ffffff" valign="top">
<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding="20" border=0 width=100% height=100% background="" bgcolor=""><font face="arial" size=4><div style="font:italic  30px times new roman;color:#8C4141"></div></font><font face="arial" size=2>
<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0 width=100%>
<tr>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td <td valign="top" width=100%><font face="arial" size=2>

That is an example of html 4.01 transitional - most of it now depreceated and most certainly in Firefox - Which happens to be a W3C Compliant browser.

The reason why standards should be followed is 'Actually' a Legal Issue, in that (And I have said this before), in that, Web-Publishing is a 'Media Format' like any thing else, newspapers, television, radio etc and they are bound by International Law, both American and European in that ALL published Media should be readily accessible by the disabled, wether that be by visual or hearing impairment.
This is especially important for the user who has difficulties with visual impariement, in that certain special kinds of software is available so the web-page is rendered by voice synthesis.

And that is where the problems begin because instead of just reading the text as it does in the xml modules in the older modules it get's mixed up and starts reading the code...takes the pleasure away a bit I think..

On top of that to the user, it shows that you do care about what you do and how you do it. It shows to them that you care enough to make sure they, the viewer, will have the optimum viewing pleasure and entertainment by your pages loading correctly, fast and clean. It shows you care enough to maintain the highest standard that you possibly can in your choosen line of work.

That in itself, is enough to warrant keeping upto the latest agreed standards and W3C and the Likes of Mozilla, Opera Lynx and other browsers work to make sure that it works. (I.E. is not a reconised compliant browser!).

I use fully compliant XHTML 1.1 along with .CSS 2.0. Soon XHTML 2.0 will be out and that is when the Forms are to be moved off-line. I can't wait for it! I.E. is the only browser that did not follow the standards and it caused all the box model problems as a result so you had to 'Hack' the fecker to get it to work properly.

The problem has now been fixed in I.E. 6.0 and above but only if the proper DTD is displayed (Document Identifier). Otherwise I.E. 6.0 will fall back on the older I.E. 5.0 version and the problem reappears.

If it's told this is 'xhtml' - No box model problem and if you build in Mozilla your page carries a 99.9% result of correct display across browser level.

Know which I prefer because the alternative is displaying (Sort of) in I.e. at currently 72%ish and falling!

I'll stick with it because of two things - I know I get top results from my site because I use compliant standards as upto date as posible and secondly because simply in a few years time ...maybe as high as ten years but I think it will be a lot less HTML 4.0/4.01 will be so depereacted that it just won't work anyway...

Remember the browsers are more and more being configured for the newer xml module and from what I have read and discussed with other colleagues is definately the way things are going...

Others may say 'Ahh WHo gives a one? thats attitude IMHO is precisely why the Internet is like it is - a very useful tool being abused and Squandered by scam artits etc...

Can it be fixed? Yes sure it can ... Vist this place W3C and follow the standards...your just gonna have to in the end...

Yep I sit in the W3C Standards camp - right wing all the way LOL

Nomad
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[motorwatchercounter]

Nice to have some intelligent comments. I am all for standardisation and making the web a place for all.

Is a graphic compliant? What about a logo? Surely these can't be "read" so why have or use them?

Scouser, sorry you can't make the w3c Christmas party. Do you think I will get an invite? I wonder if they are having standard chipolatas and have agreed on one menu. Maybe all the crackers will have the same joke in them.

Just an update on the standard I am creating. I am thinking of banning green text and having a annual renew fee. In fact I will have green text in my logo and ban everyone else from using it. That will make me feel special.

[Proteus]

I fully agree with Chris.

In my case, some people ask me: 'why don't you use the newest codes in your website?'. But how important is for you to have the most modern website, the most modern codes?... Everyday you will find newest codes and software. New ways of building a website or design an amazing graphic, and that is not going to change. We live in a world like that, and computer technology is one of the most advanced and changing industries.

But here is what will never change: the personality and the real content behind a website.

Chris says:
PR? What PR? Don't care about any PR.

In my case I would say:
W3C? what W3C? Don't care about any W3C.

[CaribbeanChoice]

The purpose of W3C and other standards orgainzations are to make standards. Without standards, your website would only work on a PC using Internet Explorer but not on a Mac using Safari or a PC using Netscape. The standards help keep everyone at least near the same page, even if they are not actually on the same page.

For example

• W3C is the official standard.
• Microsoft has taken that standard and has modified it for their browser.
• Netscape has taken that standard and modified it for their browser.
• FireFox uses, for the most part, W3C standards when rendering your webpage.
• Opera Browser uses similar standards but appear not to be totally W3C compliant.
• Other web browsers range from compliant to non-compliant.

This is why your web pages do not look the same in each browser, but can still be viewed. Every browser uses enough of the W3C standard so that all can view your web page, but not enough so that they look the same.

If your website is W3C compliant, it will most likely be rendered correctly on all browsers, no matter who makes them, because all web browsers are based on the W3C standard (or its predecessors). If your website is not W3C compliant, some marginal browsers may not render your website correctly or at all.

Some browsers like Internet Explorer "guess" what you meant even if you wrote the code wrong. FireFox or other browsers which are W3C compliant may choke if you aren't at least close to W3C standards.

I don't attempt to make my web pages W3C compliant, but I do make sure that they render correctly in the various browsers, which at least keeps me close to the standard.

[Nomad]

Maybe this will confirm the reason why...

W3C F.A.Q.

I read that a few months back and immediately changed and IMHO for the better. I have no problems with my pages anymore. I don't have to worry wether I am only going to get 60-65% of my target audience because I know I am hitting 99.9% of all web user agents. I don't have to shell out a small fortune for site optimization and positioning of my site. I get first place listings in top 10 across major search engines and for very good keywords other than the one's in my meta tags. (Remember the likes of big engines such as Google, Tahoma, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves also now search via page content).

What is the reason behind this? Only one I can think of is because of the new coding standards...in little under three-four months I have gone from zilch to first page listings against my competition and I know that most of them are paying for there positioning.

Let's look at it objectively...You buid a really nice clean looking web-site but your coding is not up to scratch and lets say you missed of placing your document identifier (DTD)

Example of an XHTML 1.1 Strict DTD

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

So a person enters a search string/has your site appear in the results list/and decides to visit.

This is what your browser is going to look at first because a browser is told to go through a certain set order, it first needs to know what it is reading. I am telling it by the identifier to read in XHTML 1.1 format. If that is not there the browser will then go through a list of other identifiers untill it finally says 'emm - no identifier' I am falling back on UTF-8. I.E. has now switched back to the old non-compliant pre-I.E. 6.0 mode.It then looks for the begining of the document or the html opening tag so it knows where to start reading the document from.

Now the next bit the browser reads is the 'Header' information. (The bit between your head tags). The browser has a pre-set order in which to read them.

The correct order I have shown before but I'll re-print them here for you. It is as well to note btw that it makes no difference which type of mark-up language you actually use HTML 4.0/4.01 or XHTML 1.0/1.1, the order is the same.

<head>
<title>Your title is the first attribute</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/trybalink_new.css" type="text/css" />
<meta content="General" name="Rating" />
<meta content="index,follow" name="Robots" />
<meta content="Anonymous Productions" name="Author" />
<meta content="2004Anonymous Productions" name="Copyright" />
<meta content="Anonymous Productions" name="Designer" />
<meta content="30" name="revisit-after" />
<meta content="Your keywords go here" name="keywords" />
<meta content="Your Discription go's here" name="description" />
</head>

Now whilst the meta content don't as a rule follow a strict implicit order the first three attributes do. If they are wrong the 'User Agent or Browser' needs to fix it first.

It then go's through the rest of the document guessing what you want it to do and try show what you want - often very poorly.

Using the correct standards means that the Browser does not have to mess around trying to 'FIX' the doument before it can 'TRY' to display it. Why do you think I.E. locks up? Most of the time if you look at the source code there's no document identifier there and the code is so deplorable that I even wonder what there writing let alone the browser.

As I stated above though it means I can rest easy in the knowledge that I am giving my visitors the best possible user friendly service that I can. It means that I care enough to make sure they are not going to have problems when they hit my site and that shows by the regular revisits I get.

I think that latter bit to be one of the most important pre-requisits to work from. It's the same principle really as what you would expect if you visit your neighbourhood store. Or any commercial outlet as essentially a commercial web-site is just that, a commercial outlet. I know the level of service I expect and as such I feel it only right that I give that as well.

Nomad

*Note* the above header code order list is written in XHTML format hence the " /> . For HTML 4.0/4.01 simply drop the forward slash AND the space!.

[motorwatchercounter]

Originally Posted by Nomad

I don't have to shell out a small fortune for site optimization and positioning of my site. I get first place listings in top 10 across major search engines and for very good keywords other than the one's in my meta tags. (Remember the likes of big engines such as Google, Tahoma, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves also now search via page content).

How do you know this? How do you know who is searching for your type of site and you do not appear?
I tried "techno, chill, psy-trance, acid techno, uv light show, ultra violet light show," all in your tags. You did not appear on the first page of google. I tried "Supporting Open Source & Charity Projects" The strap line after your site title and again you did not appear. I also tried "Relinking the twelve tribes" which appears in your title. This returned you in first place. So, 3 searches and only the last, with an exact phrase, picked you up.

While I was at it I looked at the validation of your http://www.trybalink.net/links_index.htm page. w3c returned the folllowing

"The document located at <http://www.trybalink.net/links_index.htm> was checked and found to be valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This means that the resource in question identified itself as "XHTML 1.0 Transitional" and that we successfully performed a formal validation using an SGML or XML Parser (depending on the markup language used)."

Good stuff but you are showing a XHTML 1.1 validation logo on the page?

We can never know how many lost searches we are missing. I agree that optimisation and structure do help. I know that coded pages are better than Flash pages.

Just to raise a few points again. A lot of people use free scripts for convenience. You do not need to know any coding language to have a site. Using these may not qualify for the w3c tag. Is this right? Should people like this (sic) be allowed to use the web? Will this stop people interested in coding, writing scripts and letting people download and use these for free? Will the cost of commercial scripts, which are dropping in price, have to be increased to account for validation and the extra resource it takes to make them compliant? Will governments close down sites if they do not apply to the disabled code?

Rant, rant, rant.

[webado]

Nomad and everybody interested. Here's a site that presumably tests your site for various criteria. See what you make of it.

http://sitescore.silktide.com