Site validation help

Does the notification mean that I should start using “alt” tags (I think not).

You think not? Why is that? I find that funny, among other adjectives and adverbs.

Oh, because it doesn’t say “Line 25, Column 62: required attribute “alt” not specified.” as in other errors.
[edit] Right, I have to learn to read too ??
[edit again] Damn, now it almost all comes down to the Google search. I actually hoped to find some mistakes in the sidebar which does not always come out the way it is supposed to. Would I better replace that Google search ‘widget’ (or get a real one)?
What about the “blogroll”, anything I can do there?

Ok, w3.org has a problem with the Google function that I put in a widget. Every WP installation gives one error in the “scrollbar” (which contains six links in each case) as described above.

For the rest the errors are quite clear. I never use an “alt” tag (didn’t know I had to), I never close an <img> tag (dito), I had a <br> in the index.php that had to be a <br />.

Unfortunately I didn’t find what I was actually looking for, being the reason that in IE and Browzar there’s an empty line between the title and the text of the two search widgets that I use (a normal widget and a text widget with a “google entire website” function).

This is going to be a hell of a job, but I get the hang of it. Again a few questions though.
It seems that since 2.3.2 WP corrects mistakes that I make constantly, but W3 still marks them as error. For example, I never close an <img> tag, but now WP does it, but in another way than W3 seems to prefer, being: <img src="...></a>< /> (the </a> is mine as close of an ahref). W3 now says:

You may have neglected to close an element, or perhaps you meant to “self-close” an element, that is, ending it with “/>” instead of “>”.

and

This message may appear in several cases:
You tried to include the “<” character in your page: you should escape it as “<“
You used an unescaped ampersand “&”: this may be valid in some contexts, but it is recommended to use “&”, which is always safe.
Another possibility is that you forgot to close quotes in a previous tag.

(about the < />)

Very convieniently WP also auto-generates the alt tags that I never used, but W3 says:

You have used the attribute named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not support that attribute for this element. This error is often caused by incorrect use of the “Strict” document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the “Transitional” document type to get the “target” attribute), or by using vendor proprietary extensions such as “marginheight” (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead).

This error may also result if the element itself is not supported in the document type you are using, as an undefined element will have no supported attributes; in this case, see the element-undefined error message for further information.

How to fix: check the spelling and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute. If you received this error when using the <embed> element to incorporate flash media in a Web page, see the FAQ item on valid flash.

Wrong bracket??

Is this something I should look into?
And is /> the same (or better) than an < /> like WP makes?

1.

<ul>
<li class="page_item page-item-2"><a href="https://www.gangleri.nl/news/about/" title="Section intro">Section intro</a></li>
 | <li><a href="https://www.gangleri.nl/articles">articles</a></li>

That pipe character | is not allowed there. The only things you can have inside a UL are LI’s. Anything outside the LI’s is incorrect.

2.

<FORM method=GET action="https://www.google.com/search">
 <TABLE bgcolor="#DEC8A6"><tr><td>
 <INPUT TYPE=text name=q size=15 maxlength=255 value="Google">
 <INPUT TYPE=hidden name="as_sitesearch" value="https://www.gangleri.nl">
 </td></tr></TABLE>
 </FORM>

Lots of problems here.
a) All XHTML tags must be lowercase.
b) Same for attributes like “type” and “method”.
c) All attributes must be in quotes. Like method="GET".
d) All tags must be well-formed. As in closed. As in when you have <input.. , then you must end it with either a self-close like this /> or have a </input> to close it. Normally, since input, like img, doesn’t contain anything, you self close it. Like <input whatever="whatever" />.

3. <br> has the same problem, it’s not closed. Use <br /> instead.

Fix those and that will solve most of your problems.

Thanks for the info. I just thought about the possibility that the “pipe” would be seen as code, can I replace it by the code for the image?
‘The Google problem’ is an easy one too, thanks for the info.
Also I didn’t know about the closing dash before I began to validate. What WP makes of it (< />) should better be replaced then?

All “Empty Elements” need to get closed in order for you to validate. That would be , <hr /> and image tags.

A proper image tag should look like this.

<img src="" alt="" />

You can add a handful of other attributes but you absolutely need the src, the alt and the closing “/” preceded by a blank space.

It took me awhile to get used to but once you do it’s not so bad.

Otto, about the pipes. Now that I can try it with Frontpage, I noticed that it is actually just a sign on the keyboard and it has no code such as > for >. I like the pipe as division between the links on my blogroll (Firefox puts one between every link, IE only between the pages and the blogroll. Is there a way to use it without getting an error from W3?
Btw, if an .... /> is a better ending, why does 2.3.2 generate automatic < />s? Because it ‘knows’ that a tag needs to be closed, but not which one?
In any case, especially with the hits on the Google code, I can clean up most of the mess, but that’ll be a job for tomorrow.
Thank you all.

I think you’re missing the point with the pipes. The pipe itself is not the problem. It’s the fact that you have anything at all there.

That list is an unordered list (aka <ul>). Unordered lists can ONLY contain list items (aka <li>). Anything inside the UL which is not also inside an LI is invalid. The pipe is outside the LI. That’s the problem. You can have anything you want there, but put it inside the LI. Nothing can be inside the UL without also being inside the LI. See?

Also, nobody understands what the heck you’re talking about with “automatic < />”. An empty tag is not valid, and WordPress doesn’t generate any such thing. Please explain what you’re talking about.

Also, nobody understands what the heck you’re talking about with “automatic < />”. An empty tag is not valid, and WordPress doesn’t generate any such thing. Please explain what you’re talking about.

What I refer to is this:

<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Fiction-Saga-Hadingus/dp/0226169723/ref=sr_1_6/002-4606451-2919259?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194507870&sr=1-6" target="_blank" alt="From Myth To Fiction"><img src="/bookreviews/afbeeldingen/dumezil_hadingus.jpg" align="right"></a>< /><font size="1">du mythe au roman: la saga de Hadingus et autres essais (1970)</font>

Do you notice the ...align="right></a>< />?<...align="right"/> would have been more logical.

But since I have several WP installations which I not all started to validate yet, I have checked another, but what I describe above does not seem structural, so I no longer know for sure that it wasn’t me trying a few things out (but I can’t imagine that I thought of it myself). Also I am not sure anymore in what WP I wrote what post, so let’s just say that it was myself for the moment untill I find out otherwise (which I probably won’t).

Great, on one WP installation I’m back to two errors. They are about the same widget, the dropdown of the standard category widget I think. Anything I can do here?

Right, I finished validating my five WP installations. A few remarks and leftover questions.
Articles section. “end tag for element “p” which is not open.” in “(Prose Edda verse 45)`
`”
I don’t use that `
myself. This is the line in my editor:<font size=”1″>(Prose Edda verse 45)</font>. The source does have the
, but I don't know where it comes from. Before the line there is an image and the opening of the
so nothing that requires a<p>`.

-damn, the forum messes up my text with code, the line ends with a p-ending and a blockquote-ending and I don’t use the p myself-

The same line also gives some parsing errors.

At the bottom there are two parsing errors that appear to be from the ‘general makeup’, for example </body> tag.

Bookreviews: “Line 167, Column 33: character “;” not allowed in attribute specification list” : “<p style="text-align:center";><font size="2">Gli Uomini e le Rovine (1953/“
This is the “center” command that Otto suggested, but W3 doesn’t like it.

For the rest, W3 doesn’t like my links to bookshops (Amazon and Bol) and every link is an error. Nothing much I can do about that, or…?
The end has some parsing errors that I can’t figure out.

The music reviews section misses a lot of alt tags, but I know that for the future.

Something that comes back in every (but one) installation is the only mistake left in filmreviews. This appears to be something in the standard category widget in which I use the dropdown function.

Most things have become clear with your help, here are the final ‘dots on the i’ as we say it.

Oh, and the thing that I started all this for, isn’t solved. There is a strange, white line (much like a break) between the title and the content of my search widget and a text widget that I made into a Google search widget. It appears in IE and Browzar, but not in Firefox. It’s quite ugly so I would like to be able to remove it, but I don’t know where to start (stylesheet?).

Bookreviews: “Line 167, Column 33: character “;” not allowed in attribute specification list” : “<p style=”text-align:center”;><font size=”2″>Gli Uomini e le Rovine (1953/”
This is the “center” command that Otto suggested, but W3 doesn’t like it.

You’re doing it wrong. The semi-colon should be inside the quote marks, not outside them.

Other errors:

<script lang='javascript'> is invalid. That should be
<script type='text/javascript'>.

Whenever you have an & on your page, even in a URL, it must be & instead.

Damn, I really have to learn to read, I even managed to mess up Otto’s code. I guess this will also solve another problem, because I just noticed that WP changes <div align="center"> to ‘<p align=”center”>` and that doesn’t work. [edit: problem solved]

I’ll have to see about that Java error, since (like I said) this comes from a widget that is built in WP and I wouldn’t know where to edit it.

Hmmmm, so I have to change all my Amazon links manually…..?

Thank you for the tips though.

A few last things.
I don’t understand errors about the <p>s that I didn’t put there myself and the two errors on the bottom are still a mystery to me too.