Goodman48,
In my experience, the validator is really never wrong, I am. Now, that’s not to say that occasionally you can’t disagree with it. For instance, I personally feel that a target=”” directive should be part of the standard in xhtml, since so many people use it anyway, and it is actually very useful and occasionally needed. However, in your case, the validation issues are very real, and not a mistake.
Just as en example, let’s take the META (And other) tags which the validator says”
“Line ## column ###: end tag for “something-or-another” omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified.”
In this case, lets take the first error. Here’s exactly what the validator says:
Error Line 38, column 150: end tag for "meta"
omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified .
...l, park, review, dining, restaurant">
You may have neglected to close an element,
or perhaps you meant to "self-close" an element,
that is, ending it with "/>" instead of ">".
As you can see, the last line spells out VERY clearly what it is needing. On line 38, you are missing the “/” character, telling the browser that the meta tag is done issuing information. Here’s a comparison of what YOUR’S is saying, vs. what the validator, (and every valid browser in the world) would prefer:
Yours:
<meta name="keywords" content="darwin, nt, northern,
territory, australia, news, gossip, top end, kakadu, national,
park, review, dining, restaurant">
Valid:
<meta name="keywords" content="darwin, nt, northern,
territory, australia, news, gossip, top end, kakadu, national,
park, review, dining, restaurant" />
NOTICE THE CLOSING FORWARDSLASH IN THE SECOND LINE
I would also suggest that you go back to the drawing board a bit. I would start with the validator. It can definitely be frustrating, but it IS your friend. It will tell you how to resolve about 90% of your discrepancies between browsers. If you don’t care about FF or Safari or Mozilla or Netscape or Opera (neither do I about Opera, sorry guys), or any of the others you’re neglecting, then fine. That’s your choice. But realize that you’re ignoring about 20% of the market at this juncture, and more in the future. You’ll only be able to ignore it so long. It may be more beneficial to you and your readers if you follow better coding standards.
This is work, and does take both time, and more than a “quick study” knowledge of CSS, XHTML, and standards. However, if you’re planning on doing this long term, or going big in any degree, it’s essential, IMO.
Good luck!
