XHTML, necessary or not?
-
For an experiment I checked the XHTML option on. The validation sheet with 8 items looks like mumbo-jumbo to me. For instance, I don’t understand the position of the supposed parsing error:
Line 494, Column 80
Now this one happens to mention the file name of an image in the widget section, otherwise I would never have found it. It’s not even an error message, it simply says:
Line 545: start tag was hereOther items mention faults in tag codes, like the missing of an > or a slash. But where are they? I tried a few of the given validating options, but it doesn’t get any clearer nor is the source listing.
I suppose the box ‘Clean up mark up html tidy’ is the one to correct the invalids with, but I hesitate to activate it, I might not like the corrections.Actually I hope it’s a matter of WISIWIG. So if I see a post that looks okay to me, I can ignore the XHTML readings? Or are visitors gaping at a page with 8
ruinous errors in text and make-up? -
Activate it. I don’t even know why it’s optional. Errors like this are cumulative and don’t do a thing to your blog until the day they break it completely and you have to fix it one post at a time.
-
“I don’t even know why it’s optional.” Agree – or at least the default should be on, not off, and deactivating it should be an option for those very experienced in html. Activate it before you see your posts in the sidebar.
PS Many of the “faults” the validator finds are really insignificant ones.
-
…But how do I fix these errors in older posts? I can’t even retrace them! Line This, column That doesn’t mean a thing to me.
-
Go to settings > writing and select “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” and then click “save changes.”
Now, starting with your latest post, open it in the editor, make one minor change such as adding a space and then deleting it, and then click “update post.” Continue on with each post on your blog main page.
The parsing errors do not worry about. Once you have the other errors fixed in the posts, those should go away.
-
Okay. I’ve done the main page of one blog sofar… After closing and re-opening the blog, XHTML still features a list of 9 errors, of which 6 are parsing errors. They’ll be corrected eventually? It’s sort of a spell checker for html, I presume, but otherwise I have no idea how it works.
-
Well, so far I am able the retrace the Lines. And so far they seem related with the template css. There is for instance an error message about the Rating Star system. It looks fine to me. (Except it’s seldom used, but there’s my traffickers to blame for). So I think I can safely ignore the few errors outside the parsing errors.
I’ve checked XHTML for all three blogs now, and will leave it on.
-
-
-
Thanks Panaghiotisadam
Sorry, I was a bit confused. It sounded as though there are two options, one to produce an xhtml checking report and a separate one to correct inadvertently nested XHTML! -
- The topic ‘XHTML, necessary or not?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 