mcovey
August 19th, 2004, 04:03 PM
my parents are having some people do their webpage, and I had a vew gripes with the page they provided, so I emailed them:
Hi, the web page looks fine, but I checked it to
make sure it was valid (it will display properly in
every web browser), and it is not. You can check it
for validity at validator.w3.org. As you can see,
stylesheets are poorly implemented, nor is the alt
attribute used on any images. The pages use tables
instead of the more up-to-date and dynamic div tag,
and you attempted to write it in HTML 4.01, a 5 year
old version, rather than the newest XHTML 1.1. It
would take less than two hours to correct these
problems and ensure the pages would render properly in
100% of web browsers. We think the design is great,
but these problems under the hood should be fixed
prior to the page's launch. Give us a call if these
problems seem insurmountable. Thank you.
They emailed back, 2 weeks later. I have included my responses in red. Tell me what you think.
Seldom do I work with clients that are so in tune with
online resources in general, let alone the different
validators and code-checking systems that are
available on the web. I appreciate the interest and
encourage my clients and especially a younger
generation to get involved with learning about
everything out there, however I caution that there can
be too many “resources” available. I bring this up
only because as a professional in the industry for
several years there are certain things that I have
come to recognize as dangerous to the individual
rather than helpful, this “tool” being one of them.
It is undisputed that The World Wide Web Consortium’s
(WC3 as it is commonly known) website can provide
excellent information for users and programmers alike.
However, not all of the information is as useful as
many people believe.
I have a problem believing this, as the W3C is
responsible for defining HTML and introducing new
versions. Their information is considered the
standard.
It has been my experience that their validator, for
example, is not commonly used among designers or
professionals in the web development field for several
reasons. With the all of the different development
programs out there it is almost impossible for any
validator to truly be accurate, spanning all of the
differing programming languages.
WYSIWYG editors are commonly known to provide invalid
code, hence the reason that hand-coding pages is
reccommended.
In addition, with every “new and updated” encoding
language that gets released, the validator would have
to imply that unless you update to the latest and
greatest, your site will most likely get left behind
in the vast technology that exists.
not true, the validator will validate all versions
from HTML 1.0 to XHTML 1.1.
This is untrue. Most of the technology that is
released today is designed to envelop commonly used
languages from the past few years and cater to their
code. In reality designers and developers simply test
their products “the old fashioned way,” by actually
viewing them on screen with different browsers,
operating systems, and screen resolutions to ensure
that the site visitor will be able to view and the
information accurately and have it load swiftly. This
has been time-tested and proved to be the most
accurate method rather than checking code.
Again, I disagree, the most accurate way to check your
code for validity is using the official validator,
from the group that maintains the actual language. A valid page will naturally display correctly accross browsers. Just because a page LOOKS nice, doesn't mean it's code is good, nor does it make it accessible.
Most developers use programs that generate accurate,
up-to date pages, only checking the code when advanced
programming is directly involved. The program I use to
develop all of my sites is one of the industry’s
standards and one of the more highly regarded
Macromedia programs.
Using an expensive program (I assume dreamweaver?) is
no reason to think that your code is somehow better. I
write mine in various plain text editors, including
notepad, gnu/nano, and kate.
I am using the most recent version of the software
and can assure you that you that the code it produces
is current, accurate and compatible with browsers and
cross-platform usage. It does have the capabilities
of creating XML, DHTML, ASP, JSP and other common
client and server side code pages; however it is
unnecessary to implement and generate such a format
with a basic site such as your own. I understand that
by using the validator you now have questions
regarding the accuracy of the code. With this in mind
I invite you to check the validity of commonly used,
high traffic sites I’ve listed below.
I'm sure you are aware that each of those sites uses
different "hacks" to ensure that each browser renders
the page properly. In fact, each major browser
receives a different page, not the same one. I'm sure
this won't be happening with our website.
You will find, as I did, that they too prompt the
tool to question their code and correct what the tool
considers “errors”, when in fact they are not. The
validator is just not equipped to accept what it is
not programmed to, not making the site code incorrect,
but rather making the validator tool rigid and dare I
say even invalid.
Actually, the tool is very, very accurate. These pages are not so concerned with the validity of their code, because they can easily write different versions for every browser. For instance, if the validator finds a block level element inside an inline one, and returns an error, like it or not, YOU are wrong. If it says you didn't include the ALT attribute, no longer a reccomendation, but a necessity for no matter the reason the image can not display, YOU ARE WRONG.
As for the intentional absence of the alt tags, I will
tell you that I rarely ever include them.
That is terrible practice. They are there for a reason. Many dial-up users disable images because of speed. Like it or not, many people use text-browsers which default to the alt text. Like it or not, you need it.
The alt tags
are meant to only be displayed if the images do not
load correctly or if you happen to place your mouse
curser over an image to reveal hidden text or the name
of the photo. I feel it is more important to have the
images load correctly than worry about if they did not
load at all. With today’s browsers being very
“forgiving” (the affectionate term that many industry
people use for displaying information even if there
are inconsistencies in the code or the browser
detection automatically fixes an issue before
displaying the page on screen), it is uncommon that
images load incorrectly if the page was developed
properly and transferred to the web correctly, outside
of an occasional server issue or client side
preference setting. However, if you would like the Alt
tags to be completed for some of the images, I can
certainly go back into the pages and name them
accordingly.
And I'm sure you will do so, if you want to be paid for this project.
If you still have concerns about the site due to the
WC3 Validator please call me so we may discuss them
further. I have been developing in these programs for
a long time and have never come across an issue with
any of my sites that the validator may consider a
hindrance. Let me assure you, your site - when
launched - will be designed and optimized to handle
the needs of the browsers and the different operating
systems as well as being viewed in the common screen
resolutions. I realize I've given you a LOT of
technical information here, so if you need me to
clarify anything please feel free to give me a call.
Please feel free to check these sites with the WC3
Validator:
www.Boston.com
http://www.walmart.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
www.holiday-inn.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/
I have addressed your fallacy in providing these examples above.
And you forgot to address my concern about use of tables, rather than the DIV tag. Do you test your pages with a screen reader? Braile browser? While they are a minority, blind and deaf web users do exist, and may want to find out about our business, and it is not our job to force them to look elsewhere. I suggest you read up on something called "accessibility", it's a nice thing to design with in mind.
I design with simplicity and accessibility in mind. If your browser doesnt work with stylesheets, my page works. If it doesnt load images, my page works. I tested the page they made in opera, with bugs mode off, images set not to load, and CSS turned off. You know what it looks like? Pure crap. Because this designer couldnt take the 90 minutes or so to fix the problems with the webpage he made. Because he's lazy and can't code, just use Dreamweaver in designer mode.
Hi, the web page looks fine, but I checked it to
make sure it was valid (it will display properly in
every web browser), and it is not. You can check it
for validity at validator.w3.org. As you can see,
stylesheets are poorly implemented, nor is the alt
attribute used on any images. The pages use tables
instead of the more up-to-date and dynamic div tag,
and you attempted to write it in HTML 4.01, a 5 year
old version, rather than the newest XHTML 1.1. It
would take less than two hours to correct these
problems and ensure the pages would render properly in
100% of web browsers. We think the design is great,
but these problems under the hood should be fixed
prior to the page's launch. Give us a call if these
problems seem insurmountable. Thank you.
They emailed back, 2 weeks later. I have included my responses in red. Tell me what you think.
Seldom do I work with clients that are so in tune with
online resources in general, let alone the different
validators and code-checking systems that are
available on the web. I appreciate the interest and
encourage my clients and especially a younger
generation to get involved with learning about
everything out there, however I caution that there can
be too many “resources” available. I bring this up
only because as a professional in the industry for
several years there are certain things that I have
come to recognize as dangerous to the individual
rather than helpful, this “tool” being one of them.
It is undisputed that The World Wide Web Consortium’s
(WC3 as it is commonly known) website can provide
excellent information for users and programmers alike.
However, not all of the information is as useful as
many people believe.
I have a problem believing this, as the W3C is
responsible for defining HTML and introducing new
versions. Their information is considered the
standard.
It has been my experience that their validator, for
example, is not commonly used among designers or
professionals in the web development field for several
reasons. With the all of the different development
programs out there it is almost impossible for any
validator to truly be accurate, spanning all of the
differing programming languages.
WYSIWYG editors are commonly known to provide invalid
code, hence the reason that hand-coding pages is
reccommended.
In addition, with every “new and updated” encoding
language that gets released, the validator would have
to imply that unless you update to the latest and
greatest, your site will most likely get left behind
in the vast technology that exists.
not true, the validator will validate all versions
from HTML 1.0 to XHTML 1.1.
This is untrue. Most of the technology that is
released today is designed to envelop commonly used
languages from the past few years and cater to their
code. In reality designers and developers simply test
their products “the old fashioned way,” by actually
viewing them on screen with different browsers,
operating systems, and screen resolutions to ensure
that the site visitor will be able to view and the
information accurately and have it load swiftly. This
has been time-tested and proved to be the most
accurate method rather than checking code.
Again, I disagree, the most accurate way to check your
code for validity is using the official validator,
from the group that maintains the actual language. A valid page will naturally display correctly accross browsers. Just because a page LOOKS nice, doesn't mean it's code is good, nor does it make it accessible.
Most developers use programs that generate accurate,
up-to date pages, only checking the code when advanced
programming is directly involved. The program I use to
develop all of my sites is one of the industry’s
standards and one of the more highly regarded
Macromedia programs.
Using an expensive program (I assume dreamweaver?) is
no reason to think that your code is somehow better. I
write mine in various plain text editors, including
notepad, gnu/nano, and kate.
I am using the most recent version of the software
and can assure you that you that the code it produces
is current, accurate and compatible with browsers and
cross-platform usage. It does have the capabilities
of creating XML, DHTML, ASP, JSP and other common
client and server side code pages; however it is
unnecessary to implement and generate such a format
with a basic site such as your own. I understand that
by using the validator you now have questions
regarding the accuracy of the code. With this in mind
I invite you to check the validity of commonly used,
high traffic sites I’ve listed below.
I'm sure you are aware that each of those sites uses
different "hacks" to ensure that each browser renders
the page properly. In fact, each major browser
receives a different page, not the same one. I'm sure
this won't be happening with our website.
You will find, as I did, that they too prompt the
tool to question their code and correct what the tool
considers “errors”, when in fact they are not. The
validator is just not equipped to accept what it is
not programmed to, not making the site code incorrect,
but rather making the validator tool rigid and dare I
say even invalid.
Actually, the tool is very, very accurate. These pages are not so concerned with the validity of their code, because they can easily write different versions for every browser. For instance, if the validator finds a block level element inside an inline one, and returns an error, like it or not, YOU are wrong. If it says you didn't include the ALT attribute, no longer a reccomendation, but a necessity for no matter the reason the image can not display, YOU ARE WRONG.
As for the intentional absence of the alt tags, I will
tell you that I rarely ever include them.
That is terrible practice. They are there for a reason. Many dial-up users disable images because of speed. Like it or not, many people use text-browsers which default to the alt text. Like it or not, you need it.
The alt tags
are meant to only be displayed if the images do not
load correctly or if you happen to place your mouse
curser over an image to reveal hidden text or the name
of the photo. I feel it is more important to have the
images load correctly than worry about if they did not
load at all. With today’s browsers being very
“forgiving” (the affectionate term that many industry
people use for displaying information even if there
are inconsistencies in the code or the browser
detection automatically fixes an issue before
displaying the page on screen), it is uncommon that
images load incorrectly if the page was developed
properly and transferred to the web correctly, outside
of an occasional server issue or client side
preference setting. However, if you would like the Alt
tags to be completed for some of the images, I can
certainly go back into the pages and name them
accordingly.
And I'm sure you will do so, if you want to be paid for this project.
If you still have concerns about the site due to the
WC3 Validator please call me so we may discuss them
further. I have been developing in these programs for
a long time and have never come across an issue with
any of my sites that the validator may consider a
hindrance. Let me assure you, your site - when
launched - will be designed and optimized to handle
the needs of the browsers and the different operating
systems as well as being viewed in the common screen
resolutions. I realize I've given you a LOT of
technical information here, so if you need me to
clarify anything please feel free to give me a call.
Please feel free to check these sites with the WC3
Validator:
www.Boston.com
http://www.walmart.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
www.holiday-inn.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/
I have addressed your fallacy in providing these examples above.
And you forgot to address my concern about use of tables, rather than the DIV tag. Do you test your pages with a screen reader? Braile browser? While they are a minority, blind and deaf web users do exist, and may want to find out about our business, and it is not our job to force them to look elsewhere. I suggest you read up on something called "accessibility", it's a nice thing to design with in mind.
I design with simplicity and accessibility in mind. If your browser doesnt work with stylesheets, my page works. If it doesnt load images, my page works. I tested the page they made in opera, with bugs mode off, images set not to load, and CSS turned off. You know what it looks like? Pure crap. Because this designer couldnt take the 90 minutes or so to fix the problems with the webpage he made. Because he's lazy and can't code, just use Dreamweaver in designer mode.