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Could not validate site


mzsade

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Hi, have finished reading the html, and css tutorials here, no offense, but they were too sketchy to build any confidence in me but good enough to get me hooked and look for more. Discovered this; http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_syntax.asp. Tried out validating the killersites page and got this; http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.killersites.com%2F. Similar thing happened with google.com, i know i am out of my depth bothering about these things at this stage having only picked up some html, but what's it mean? Are the sites which fail validation not quite up to the mark, less polished?

 

Do check out their quiz section, i was aiming for something like that here, but a bit more sophisticated, something that would test actual task oriented coding ability and not just one's memory of documentation covered, more like mini-projects in increasing order of complexity. I would request the senior members to retrace their work right back to the time they made their first web page for this project (hope you will make it one).

 

Edit: Something that takes one step by increasingly complex step beyond this: http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss.en.html

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A major part of learning website design is testing yourself, instead of/as well as others testing you...

 

What i did, was i found a company that had a bad website, like this, and i tried to create my own version of the website, to see if i could do any better...

 

 

Just make a website and either look at it on your localhost, or use a free web host to begin with, and you will clearly see how much you know and how much you don't :)

 

 

 

About the validation thing, did you scroll down on that link?

 

Read the errors, they just interpreted it differently, like where height"" is shown to be false, because it has no number inside it, yet it still works fine on the browser.

 

 

Any real error can be seen by self-checking the website.

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Tried out validating the killersites page and got this; http://validator.w3....ersites.com%2F. Similar thing happened with google.com, i know i am out of my depth bothering about these things at this stage having only picked up some html, but what's it mean? Are the sites which fail validation not quite up to the mark, less polished?

Here's my views about validation... Validation is important, especially for beginners just learning HTML/CSS. It's important to beginners because beginners often make minor coding errors (incorrectly nested tags, missing tags, invalid tags, etc.) and validating your site can help you find and correct those errors. I encourage people to validate since different browsers interpret those sort of errors differently, and may cause inconsistencies between browsers. If you are having issues with a site displaying differently in different browsers, this is the first thing I would check. Even for advanced users, this is the case -- I can and still do occasionally make minor mistakes and validation helps catch those errors.

 

That said, I also think validation is less important than ensuring that the site looks and displays properly. Visitors don't really care if your site validates, but will care if there are display errors that disrupt the user experience, cause them to distrust the website creators (which may mean they don't buy your product or find out more information about your service) or make the site unusable. If your site doesn't validate, it isn't the end of the world. It's just one tool in the web designer/developer's toolbox. As you get more experience with this too, you will realize that even code that works fine may not validate, especially code related to embedding video or audio.

 

Regarding the KillerSites site not passing validation... Those errors come from four main sources:

-- "NET-enabling start-tag requires SHORTTAG YES": this error is caused by the use of XHTML style closing tags on images ("/>") when using HTML4 (should be ">"). This I should probably fix, though it is a minor issue and won't affect visitors in any way.

-- Various errors related to the embedded video. This isn't something that I can really fix - you need different code to display video content in different browsers, and embedding video usually means the site won't pass validation.

-- "end tag for "UL" which is not finished": This is an issue because the validator thinks there is an empty <ul> - a <ul> without any list items. Technically true, though Javascript is used after the page loads to provide content, so this error can be ignored.

-- Errors related to content within URLs. These too you can safely ignore.

 

Basically, what I am saying is yes, KillerSites doesn't validate, but none of the errors that the validator finds are significant or affect the user experience in any way.

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Hey Dan, that bakery site looked pretty good to me apart from the fact that i couldn't "view page source"..nice pudding colored background and all :) and how did you improve it?

 

Which brings me, Ben, to a similar thought, far be it from me to be audacious enough to find faults in this website, most people think of having a website or learning how to make one when they have seen something they like, so what i was leading up to was, suppose i fancy "killersites.com" for eg., a site with it's own forum, if i were to grab it's home page source, would it be possible to 'reverse design' the style sheet and scripts on the basis of that? Just one tutorial on the process would be enough to make a professional out of anyone; it's my contention.

 

Or, say any one of the templates so generously offered here, any one tutorial which explained the html, css, and scripts in detail, alignment and display options, their permutations and limitations within that template, how to change those, how to add a forum, embed video, the whole shebang with one good example..now that would be a tutorial, not this "Hello World" level stuff..i will understand if these are trade secrets and not to be shared freely, don't get around much so i wouldn't know.

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Well, the same principles still apply - you'd just need to use GIMP or your image editor of choice. I was a GIMP user for a while, before I shelled out the money to buy Photoshop legally. Even if you ignore the "Photoshop" side of things, it teaches you how to take a design and build it from scratch.

 

There are of course non-KillerSites alternatives as well:

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/site-builds/convert-a-warm-cheerful-web-design-to-html-and-css/

 

or other similar tutorials.

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