Compliant Code Render Issues

[adsol]

I didn't see this mentioned so I thought I would mention it.

We try hard to design 100% valid w3c compliant sites. While the templates we design for our client's are 100% compliant, SS often adds invalid markup to the page's code and it is frustrating since the code errors cause the page to no validate.

For example:

- Unclosed tags:
- Form fields need to end in a /> and SS just adds the >
- The meta generator tag at the top of the html needs to end in a /> SS uses just a >
- Missing quotes around attributes.
- When using a list of order options SS writes <td align=left>. The correct syntax is <td align="left">
- Form fields also have this error as well.
- This occurs mostly where any form of table is written.

If these issues are corrected in a future version we should have good compliant code to work with.

[Jim]

What DTD are you validating against? The html specification does not allow for a /> closing of a tag, that is part of the xhtml specification. The code generated by ShopSite is designed for the html spec and not the xhtml.

Although having a site that is 100% W3C valid html code is a nice goal, the fact of the matter is that none of the major browsers themselves are 100% compliant. And if they were to require all web pages they display to be 100% compliant probably 99.9% of the web would no longer function.

Try validating pages of any major web presence, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Dell, Barnsandnoble, Bing, etc. every one will report errors. Even the W3C standards website, http://www.w3.org, has non-compliant code on some pages. The only one I found that didn't report errors was the site I used for validation, www.htmlhelp.com.

In each version we try to fix any instances of bad html that are found. So if you can give specific instances, such as the <td align=left> you mentioned, where attributes are missing quotes around them let us know and I'll log them to be fixed. Which tables are you seeing this as a consistent problem in, shopping cart, store pages, quantity tables etc.

[adsol]

Thanks Jim,

We are wrapping up a couple stores right now and I will post the places I find the missing quotes in the coming days.

Also, it would be nice to have a toggle where we can decide if we want xhtml or html specs. I don't know of too many web developers not using xhtml now days so being able to switch would be a nice feature. The only main issue is the closing />.