[thelist] Which HTML (W3C validator)

Thu Mar 14 09:38:00 CST 2002

> From: Michael Galvin <michael at sourcedesign.ie>

> I'm a little confused.  I decided to run one of my clients' sites
> through the W3C validator, and obviously and quite expectedly, it
> threw up major chunks.  But picking the DOCTYPE in the validator
> didn't seem to make things any better.

then the code is not compliant with any version of HTML...

> 4.01 Frameset had a problem with <td> background
> 4.01 Strict had a problem with <body> bgcolor (!)
> 3.2 had a problem with <body> onload
> 2.0 had a problem with anything more than <table>
>
> The best I could get was 4.01 Transitional.  I assume by rights, I
> should be conforming to 4.01 Strict?  Is there any reason why I would

ahhh.... well, if it validates to some version, you're ok... depending
on which matters to you... some people use older doctypes for
various reasons, including backward compatibility, legacy needs,
etc... just choose the one that best suits your goals (and
sometimes your code)...

> ever want to validate using older DOCTYPEs?  If I can't use <body
> bgcolor...> in 4.01 strict, the implies to me that I need to use CSS
> for all formatting?

if you are going for strict, correct... you'll need to remove those
attributes...