Re: Need some help with validating

On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 17:58:28 GMT, mike <nogood@.invalid> wrote:

After trying to validate this page for a couple of days now I was
wondering if someone might be able to help me out. Below is a list of
snippets where I am having the errors.
...
1. Line 334, column 13: there is no attribute "SRC"
bgsound src="C:\My Documents\zingwent.mids"
...
2. Line 334, column 44: element "BGSOUND" undefined
bgsound src="C:\My Documents\zingwent.mids"

There is no element bgsound in HTML. It's a proprietary element, not part
of the specs. See http://www.htmlhelp.com/design/dtd/customdtd.html for a
method of creating your own custom DTD which will allow this to validate.

3. Line 444, column 13: there is no attribute "NAME"
ilayer name="waves34i"><div id="waves34"><img src="wavesanim.gif"
alt="animated
...
4. Line 444, column 23: element "ILAYER" undefined
ilayer name="waves34i"><div id="waves34"><img src="wavesanim.gif"
alt="animated

Same here. A Netscape invention.

5. Line 448, column 7: required attribute "TYPE" not specified
script>printdate();</script

See http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interac...ml#edef-SCRIPT - the
type attribute must be stated. <script type="text/javascript"> perhaps.

BTW, the previous link is to the actual specs of HTML 4. You'd do well to
familiarize yourself with this series of documents.

6. Line 452, column 29: document type does not allow element "P" here;
missing one of "APPLET", "OBJECT", "MAP", "IFRAME", "BUTTON" start-tag
World Wide Web.<P> I am the webmaster of this site and
...
7. Line 459, column 14: document type does not allow element "P" here;
missing one of "APPLET", "OBJECT", "MAP", "IFRAME", "BUTTON" start-tag
P>After you have browsed through my site please sign my guestbook

Per your code:

451: <span class="contpara">test the
452: World Wide Web.<P> test
456: <A href="http://www.test">test
457: test</A> and getting a lot of acknowledgements from
others
458: here is what I have to show which I hope you like.</P
459: <P>After you have browsed through my site please sign my
guestbook
460: </span

span is inline, it cannot contain p. You likely meant to use div instead;
it can legally contain p.

Neal wrote:

There is no element bgsound in HTML. It's a proprietary element, not
part of the specs. See http://www.htmlhelp.com/design/dtd/customdtd.html
for a method of creating your own custom DTD which will allow this to
validate.

I don't recommend that you even consider doing that. The problem with
proprietary elements is not only that they do not validate, but that
they have not been standardised and cannot be interoperably implemented
(without backwards engineering an existing implementation) in all UAs.
Generally, there's no point in using proprietary elements and
attributes; most, if not all, are presentational and the same effect can
usually be accomplished with CSS.

In the case of <bgsound>, there is no standardised method of doing
this yet (though there *may* be in CSS3 [1]), but it *must* be the
user's decision to play the sound, not the authors. It is possible to
embed an object, such as a Flash movie that has sound. But if you do
this, then add a play button so the user can start it manually. DO NOT
start it automatically when the page loads.

[1] http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work#audio
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://www.lachy.id.au/

Please direct all spam to abuse (AT) 127 (DOT) 0.0.1
Thank you.