Re: About the & and validation & Amazon links

"Mikkel Møldrup-Lakjer" <mikkel (AT) fabel (DOT) dk> wrote:

As discussed recently, Amazon among others do not use the &amp;
required for validation, but simply the & in their links.

That really annoys me, so I would prefer to fix this. Now my question
is: if I register with Amazon's affiliate program and then modify
their links so they validate, might this affect Amazon's ability to
recognize my referral?

No, since you don't modify the link, you change the encoding in HTML to a
valid one. There is *no* way that Amazon can see that you use &amp; because
browsers translate the &amp; into & before they fetch the URL.

Also, some links by Amazon lack the alt atrribute, also impeding
validation.

Again, you can add alt. Amazon can't see if you add attributes or not.

Unless Amazon uses some kind of checksum in relation to their links, I
cannot see why I shouldn't modify their links.

Even if they did, there is *no* way they can detect the encoding in HTML
because the browser of your visitors does the *decoding* before it goes to
Amazon.


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