HRWiki talk:Validation committee

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Current revision as of 22:57, 17 December 2010

So... what is the point of this committee, exactly? Shouldn't everybody be replacing "bad code" when they see it? And what is wrong with the font tag? Are we getting rid of all HTML? Aurora the Homestar Coder 18:57, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nothing is necessarily wrong with the <font> tag, except that it is only valid for older versions of HTML. The wiki uses XHTML 1.0, and the <font> tag is deprecated in that language, meaning it is no longer in use and will invalidate your page if you use it. Invalid pages may not display properly in some browsers. Instead, you should use the more appropriate <span> tag. — Joey (talk·edits) 19:23, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I did not know that! Uh... dag, I've been littering pages with the "font" tag thanks to my signature. Uh... I'ma go fix that now... *runs away sheepishly* Aurora the Homestar Coder 19:24, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is a very very good idea to always put quote marks around your attribute values. It is never wrong to do so, and very often it is absolutely necessary. For instance, your <font color=#8B0000> isn't valid. Instead try <font color="#8B0000">. -- Tom 19:27, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is my signature fixed now? I checked this page: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/index/attributes.html (this might be a good page to link to, as it's a comprehensive list of deprecated tags according to W3). Aurora the Homestar Coder 19:29, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hm, I didn't know this, but apparently the font tag is still part of the XHTML 1.0 Transitional spec, so we still have valid pages when people use it right. One thing though, the "#" symbol is unecessary and invalid when using the font tag. The "#" symbol is only important when declaring a color using CSS. — Joey (talk·edits) 16:36, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just a quick point. While <font> is, in fact, still a part of XHTML 1.0 Transitional, this is only due to the 'transitional' bit. It's in general wrong to use it, or any other HTML tags that do anything but give something structural or semantic value. <div> is structural; <blockquote> is semantic. So, though I realize validation is the top priority, it would be cool if this community could clean up the conceptually invalid stuff as well. Also, to Aurora: I think you're looking at the HTML 4.0 deprecated tags, not the XHTML 1.0 Transitional ones. HTML 4.0 has already been deprecated itself, as far as I can recall. (P.S. Please allow the <abbr> tag to be used in a Wiki context!) - Jweb Guru 18:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction 2 isn't valid

HRWiki:Introduction_2 isn't valid XHTML. I would fix it myself, but it's a protected page. Could someone fix it? ~ Sephy 23:09, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I would, but I don't know what's wrong with it... --Jay (Talk) 23:15, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Found the error. Took some time to discover it, though.

* '''[[MetaWikipedia:Help:Link|Link]]''' to other Wiki articles and other Web sites</div>
</div>

* '''[[MetaWikipedia:Help:Link|Link]]''' to other Wiki articles and other Web sites
</div></div>

Ah. Okay, fixed. --Jay (Talk) 09:15, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Some Validation Committee members have invalid or depecated code in their sigs

Woddfellow2 and firefoxman's signatures break the validation in the Validation committee page. I don't know what's worse, that members of the Validation committee are breaking pages with their sigs or that the validation page itself, which should be setting an example, is broken. They're signatures, so I don't feel too comfortable editing them. What should we do on those cases? ~ Sephy 00:40, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I've messaged a few of these people and will try to catch the rest of them this afternoon. Sorry it's taken me so long to notice this and do anything about it. I'm also going to go ahead and edit them on this page just to keep things valid. — Joey (talk·edits) 21:14, 14 Sep 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bookmarklet and other extension options

Another option for easy checking is the "validate html" bookmarket from Squarefree. And I use the Web Developer extension for Firefox. -- Tom 01:25, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Just mentioning, the Opera browser has valitation built in. - Qermaq - (^T/C)  15:31, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Confused

I am very confused about this commitee. What is it? Rogue Leader / (my talk) 19:20, 14 Sep 2005 (UTC)

There's an international organization called the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C for short) that publishes official specifications on how HTML should be properly formatted. Since MediaWiki allows HTML in articles, there's potential for users to create improper HTML. There isn't anything built-in to MediaWiki that checks for improper code, so we have to keep an eye out for it ourselves. Thus, we created a committee to find invalid pages and properly format them. Does this make sense? — Joey (talk·edits) 20:58, 14 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Much. Thanks Mr. Day! Rogue Leader / (my talk) 23:58, 15 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Hi! I have a question. I have now encountered two user pages that render different on different browsers (IE and Mozilla) - they are now fixed, but It doesn't mean that the same problem can't occur in a regular page. Does your commitee address such rendering issues (are the XHTML 1.0 standars supposed to produce the same output regardless of renderer)? Do you have a set of guidelines to make pages look uniform across browser platforms (at least the major ones). --Stux 19:23, 7 Oct 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fanstuff

I've noticed that a lot of the Fanstuff pages have bad XHTML code in them, including the navigation side bar. Should the validation committee also be concerned with pages on Fanstuff, or not, or should there even be a separate Fanstuff validation committee? -AtionSong 16:53, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I decided to be bold and created it. If you guys would come down to help, there are a lot of code issues on fanstuff aside from color tags. Thanks in advance. -AtionSong 17:22, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's the link: HRFWiki:HRFWiki:Validation committee. -AtionSong

[edit] Maybe off topic...

This isn't a validation issue, more a usability issue, but don't know where else to put it.

When I, say, edit the DVD Fun Facts, say Real Life References, on return to the actual page it looks for the name "Real Life References". Invariably, it finds the first one, not the "_2" one which it should. Is this an error in programming, a failing in the browser parsing the namespace, or what? - Qermaq - (^T/C)  01:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New color tags

So are we going to have to use the color's hex-decimal code with the new color tags? I found a hex-decimal color guide. [Webmonkey] --Onekopaka 19:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

No, the color css directive can be given in any of these ways:

• #rrggbb, these are hexadecimal values, e.g. #00cc22
  • #rgb, the above example could be abbreviated as #0c2
• rgb(x,x,x), where x is an integer between 0 and 255, e.g. rgb(0, 204, 34)
• rgb(y%,y%,y%), where y is a number between 0.0 and 100.0, e.g. rgb(0%, 80%, 13.33%)

Further, the 16 color keywords from the VGA color pallete may be used: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and yellow. —Bryanc 19:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Invalid CSS?

[1] It seems our stylesheet doesn't validate. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 21:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that that would be MediaWiki's fault. As you can see, we're not alone. ([2], [3], [4]) — Lapper (talk) 21:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems the validator is out of date. It gives two errors, one complaining about media="screen,projection", and one complaining about color: orange.

For the first, it's just plain wrong. Both screen and projection are defined media types, and the spec says these can be comma-separated.

For the second... well, it would be invalid CSS2, but both the color list in CSS2.1 and the proposed color module of CSS3 include orange in the list as #FFA500. The validator links to the definition of color in CSS2, which doesn't include orange, but is obsolete.

All of the warnings are the usual "There may or may not be a problem here, but the test programmer wasn't able to make it tell if there is or not, you'll have to check" (which is basically what a "warning" means - it just highlights a potential problem). Most of them are "color without background-color" or "background-color without color" which generate so many false positives they can be generally ignored. I've looked at the others too, and they're all false positives.

In short, I see nothing in that results page that we should be worried about. --phlip ^T_C 21:39, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah ha. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 21:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

You'd expect the page for the validation committee to have valid CSS, but apparently it doesn't. The thing said it found three errors. In fact, every page I checked had those same three problems. What's the deal? Coach ‎'s Cool! 00:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

My HTML tidy result gives that page a thumbs up. What three problems is it giving you? —Guard Duck ^talk 01:24, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

It's HTML is fine. I'm talking about CSS. To validate CSS I go here. And here's the page that gave me the three errors, plus 93 warnings.Coach ‎'s Cool! 01:54, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I just now saw the other section about this. Never mind. Coach ‎'s Cool! 01:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Are we supposed to validate with CCS2.1 or CSS3? —Soiled Bargains ^(talk|ctrb) 22:57, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Firebug

I have a HTML validation program called Firebug that see an error on every page and says: edit is not defined null

[edit] Every Talk page is invalid

I'v noticed, almost every page with a signature on it is not valid. This i sbecause almost EVERYONE here with colors on their sig still uses <font>. Maybe their should be a community wide project that tell everyone to change. Any objections? ^{The Goblin!!} 21:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we really need to worry about talk pages... --DorianGray 21:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How do I use this thing?

OK, I downloaded the HTML validator thingy for Firefox but I really don't know how it works. I click on "Clean up the page" but I'm lost after that. I'd love to join this committee but I need to know how to use the HTML validator first. Coach ‎'s Cool! 22:20, 24 January 2009 (UTC)