[Javascript] How to get valid XHTML when links contain "invalid characters"

[Roger Roelofs]

Janie,

On Jan 31, 2006, at 10:12 PM, Janie Hadsel wrote:

> This may be OT, but I've been trying to get a page with links to  
> Mapquest URLs to validate according to the W3C. Since they are  
> external links I've used Javascript to open them in new windows, and I  
> was surprised to find that the W3C validator still viewed them as  
> XHTML when they were passed to a Javascript function. Any ideas?
>
>  Here's the link: http://www.gimv.org/contact/locations.htm

the & is a special character.  To validate replace then with &   
Also, it would be better to write the a element like this...

<a  
href="http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&amp; 
searchtype=address&amp;country=US&amp;addtohistory=&amp; 
address=400+East+Church+Street&amp;city=Frederick&amp;state=MD&amp; 
zipcode=21701" class="maplink">view a map</a>

See <http://adactio.com/atmedia2005/> for a good example.

// add this to the script in the head section
function doMapLinks() {
   if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return false;
   var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
   for (var i=0; i < links.length; i++) {
     if (links[i].className.match("maplink")) {
       links[i].onclick = function() {
         viewMapWin(this.href);
         return false;
       }
     }
   }
}
window.onload = doMapLinks;

-- 
Roger Roelofs
Datacomp Appraisal Services