Which version in LH for?

[Jane Withnolastname]

I have a web page that uses an unordered list (<UL>) and the LH (list
header) tag. I know LH is a valid tag because it is clearly defined by
the W3C here: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/bulletlists.html
The problem is, when I try to validate the page at W3C, it tells me:
" element "LH" undefined "
My page is 4.01 Transitional, using charset windows-1252.
Any ideas why this won't validate?

[Shawn K. Quinn]

Jane Withnolastname wrote:

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 07:49:08 +0000 (UTC), "Jukka K. Korpela"
<jk******@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:

Jane Withnolastname <Ja************ **********@yaho o.com> wrote:

Yes, it was the vertical gap I was trying to get rid of.
So CSS would be the answer, wouldn't it?

Probably, but I didn't have the time to look into that when I was
doing the page.

I got around
the whole thing by writing the entire list, including the LH tag, in
JavaScript.

That sounds like pointless kludgery of the year. And you mean you use LH
tag?

Not sure that it's pointless, since I achieved the desired result.

It's pointless when there is a much cleaner solution that does not break on
browsers which either can't handle Javascript, or have it disabled (or
filtered at a proxy).

and probably won't display
right on some browsers,

YM "is guaranteed to fail on all browsers, except if they happen to
support JavaScript and have that support enabled".

Uh, yeah.

You do test your sites with Javascript off, I hope? If not, you should. Test
at least once with various combinations of Javascript, Java, Flash, etc.
disabled, before the site goes live, and periodically thereafter.

but as long as it looks right on IE6 and
Validates, that's all I really care about :)

So you're really not interested in the topic of this group, authoring for
the WWW, are you?

I'm interested in writing a page that Validates. That's all. Get
semantic if you want.

Validation is only one part of successful authoring for the Web. IE6 is far
from an ideal browser for testing as it gets a number of things horribly
wrong. I would go as far as to say it is not even really a Web browser,
given flagrant non-compliance with parts of the HTTP specification, grossly
incorrect rendering of alpha-channel PNG images.
Or, if you wanna know the whole story, here it is:

I am using Coffee Cup HTML Editor, which is the best text editor I
have found.
I've never heard of this before. Are you sure you are using a current
version of this thing, whatever it is? Are you aware standards are changed
over time?
I noticed that it had a "List Wizard" and thought I'd try
it, to see what it offered. One of the things it offered was a List
Header, which displayed using the LH tag. I had never heard of this
before but, after seeing what it looked like in IE6, I decided to use
it. After having the page up for a few days, I remembered that I
hadn't Validated it, as I had done with all the other pages on my
site. So off I went to W3C, which gave me the error messages about the
LH tag.
No big surprise, given the LH tag is not in any official W3C HTML
recommendation (standard).
I went to the home page of W3C and typed in "list header" in
the Search box and was sent to a page that seemed to indicate that the
tag was valid.
Was this page a recommendation (standard) or was it the expired HTML 3.0
draft that never was adopted as a formal standard?
No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to Validate. So I went looking for
something on the W3C site to tell me why. The FAQ pointed to this
newsgroup as a place to ask questions about why things don't validate.
So I did. And I got my answer. In the meantime, I had to substitute something in the page so that it
would a)display as I wanted, b)Validate. So I chose to obfuscate it
with JavaScript. And that worked. The page itself is generally of
little importance and I don't expect it to be looked at by anyone, and
I don't want it looked at by Google,
The proper way to do this is to add a text/plain document as robots.txt on
your server root, NOT by obsfuscating the page with Javascript. Believe me,
Googlebot (and other search engine robots, for that matter) will index
*anything* it can find that it has not been told not to. *ANYTHING*.
but if someone happens to come upon it, it has to validate.

Why was I so stupid as to not realize why the tag wouldn't validate?
Because I was not aware that some tags were removed from use
The LH element was never removed from use. It was never adopted as part of a
standard to begin with.
and, since the tag was included in CoffeeCup software, and since the
software opens a New HTML document with a 4.0 Transitional DTD, I
figured it must be usable in that version. How could I possibly know
that it was from an unreleased beta version of HTML?
Sorry, but I couldn't have known. Now I do. Thanks.

I would say this is a bug in your software. Any software which claims,
either explicitly (by including a statement in its documentation) or
implicitly (by adding the appropriate DOCTYPE identifier to its HTML
documents) to produce valid HTML by a particular standard, and which
includes mechanisms to insert elements which are not in that version of the
standard, contains a bug.

It amazes me at the number of site authors that are quick to blame their
tools, and not research what the published specifications say for
themselves. Not that site authors should bear the bulk of the blame, but
they should at least know what they are getting into when they use a
particular tool. Thankfully, now, those who make the tools are starting to
understand the importance of standardization ; standardization is, after
all, how the Internet (and by extension, the World Wide Web) grew to the
size it has.

--
Shawn K. Quinn

[Jim Dabell]

Jane Withnolastname wrote:

[snip]

In the meantime, I had to substitute something in the page so that it
would a)display as I wanted, b)Validate. So I chose to obfuscate it
with JavaScript. And that worked. The page itself is generally of
little importance and I don't expect it to be looked at by anyone, and
I don't want it looked at by Google, but if someone happens to come
upon it, it has to validate.

Why? Validation for the sake of it is useless. Outside of any meaningful
context, who cares what an obscure program thinks of your page? All you
have done is intentionally break your page to get a pat on the head from
the validator. Why not just use a real heading element instead?
--
Jim Dabell

[Jane Withnolastname]

On Sat, 09 Aug 2003 01:21:48 -0500, "Shawn K. Quinn"
<sk*****@xeviou s.kicks-ass.net> wrote:

I got around
the whole thing by writing the entire list, including the LH tag, in
JavaScript.

That sounds like pointless kludgery of the year. And you mean you use LH
tag?
Not sure that it's pointless, since I achieved the desired result.

It's pointless when there is a much cleaner solution that does not break on
browsers which either can't handle Javascript, or have it disabled (or
filtered at a proxy).

Sure, but I didn't have the cleaner solution at my fingertips and I
had to fix it in a hurry. Although it was meant as a permanent fix, I
can see from the response generated here that there is a better way
and so, when I have the time to fix it right, I will.
You do test your sites with Javascript off, I hope? If not, you should. Test
at least once with various combinations of Javascript, Java, Flash, etc.
disabled, before the site goes live, and periodically thereafter.
Uh, no. I design my site for IE6 and that's it. As far as I can tell,
you can't turn JS off in IE6 (maybe it's buried somewhere, but I
remember you used to be able to turn it off in Options, and it's not
there now). I don't use Java or Flash.
I have no interest in other browsers since I know FOR A FACT that the
majority of browsers hitting my site are IE4+, which is compatible
with IE6. The minority is Netscape (no other browsers hit my site).
The purpose of the page in question is to tell people using browsers
other than IE why the site looks wrong to them.
Where it is important, I have <NOSCRIPT> tags for the JavaScript
content. Where it's not important, the NS tags simply say to turn on
JavaScript.
I have seen my site rendered in Netscape 4, 6 and 7 and they all look
different. As far as I'm concerned, Netscape can take a flying leap!
Validation is only one part of successful authoring for the Web. IE6 is far
from an ideal browser for testing as it gets a number of things horribly
wrong. I would go as far as to say it is not even really a Web browser,
given flagrant non-compliance with parts of the HTTP specification, grossly
incorrect rendering of alpha-channel PNG images.
Well, I don't use PNG images - who does? And as for the rest of it, I
have no idea what you mean. The pages validate and they still look the
way I intended in IE6, that's all I want.

I am using Coffee Cup HTML Editor, which is the best text editor I
have found.

I've never heard of this before. Are you sure you are using a current
version of this thing, whatever it is? Are you aware standards are changed
over time?

I'm surprised you've never heard of it. It's my understanding that
they are quite a popular company, with many fingers in the
web-authoring pie (FTP, image mapper, etc.)
And no, I wasn't aware that standards are changed - that's my whole
point. Upgraded, yes. Backward-compatible, yes. Changed, no, I didn't
know.

I went to the home page of W3C and typed in "list header" in
the Search box and was sent to a page that seemed to indicate that the
tag was valid.

Was this page a recommendation (standard) or was it the expired HTML 3.0
draft that never was adopted as a formal standard?

As I know now, it was an archived page of old tags that were never
used. However, the page itself did not say that it was a proposed tag,
nor did it say it was never implemented. See for yourself:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/bulletlists.html
You might argue that if I had checked the URL, I would have seen that
it was for HTML 3. But I would return the argument that, as stated
above, I didn't know they dropped tags. It was my understanding that
future versions of HTML were backward-compatible and would still be
able to understand the older tags. I didn't check the URL, but that's
beside the point. I simply figured that if it was on the W3C site and
didn't explicitly say "don't use this tag", it was valid. Which is why
I was so confused when it didn't validate.

In the meantime, I had to substitute something in the page so that it
would a)display as I wanted, b)Validate. So I chose to obfuscate it
with JavaScript. And that worked. The page itself is generally of
little importance and I don't expect it to be looked at by anyone, and
I don't want it looked at by Google,

The proper way to do this is to add a text/plain document as robots.txt on
your server root, NOT by obsfuscating the page with Javascript. Believe me,
Googlebot (and other search engine robots, for that matter) will index
*anything* it can find that it has not been told not to. *ANYTHING*.

I use <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDE X, NOFOLLOW"> which I am told
works exactly the same as a robots.txt file

and, since the tag was included in CoffeeCup software, and since the
software opens a New HTML document with a 4.0 Transitional DTD, I
figured it must be usable in that version. How could I possibly know
that it was from an unreleased beta version of HTML?
Sorry, but I couldn't have known. Now I do. Thanks.

I would say this is a bug in your software. Any software which claims,
either explicitly (by including a statement in its documentation) or
implicitly (by adding the appropriate DOCTYPE identifier to its HTML
documents) to produce valid HTML by a particular standard, and which
includes mechanisms to insert elements which are not in that version of the
standard, contains a bug.

So it would seem.
It amazes me at the number of site authors that are quick to blame their
tools, and not research what the published specifications say for
themselves. Not that site authors should bear the bulk of the blame, but
they should at least know what they are getting into when they use a
particular tool. Thankfully, now, those who make the tools are starting to
understand the importance of standardization ; standardization is, after
all, how the Internet (and by extension, the World Wide Web) grew to the
size it has.

I don't know if this is a passive way of saying I'm blaming my tools
or if it's just a general observation. I will say this: It took three
days of posting before I revealed the name of my software. And while
it may appear that I was blaming the software, in fact I was simply
stating how I even became aware of the tag in the first place. You are
correct that the tag shouldn't be included in the software (I have the
latest version, BTW), but that's why I validate - to make sure
everything is right. And when it's not, I go on an endless quest to
find out why. The quest for me ended, actually, a couple days ago,
when I was informed that the tag was never instituted. I must now stop
wasting time on here and go and figure out a way to fix it so it looks
the way I want and still validate.
Thanks.

[Jane Withnolastname]

On Sat, 09 Aug 2003 14:12:55 +0100, Jim Dabell
<ji********@jim dabell.com> wrote:

Jane Withnolastname wrote:

[snip]

In the meantime, I had to substitute something in the page so that it
would a)display as I wanted, b)Validate. So I chose to obfuscate it
with JavaScript. And that worked. The page itself is generally of
little importance and I don't expect it to be looked at by anyone, and
I don't want it looked at by Google, but if someone happens to come
upon it, it has to validate.

Why? Validation for the sake of it is useless. Outside of any meaningful
context, who cares what an obscure program thinks of your page? All you
have done is intentionally break your page to get a pat on the head from
the validator. Why not just use a real heading element instead?

Heh. The page in question was bragging about how every page in my site
validated and if your browser can't read it then your browser does not
meet the standards of the W3C. Therefore, the page HAD to validate, or
I would have looked like a complete idiot! :)

[Joel Shepherd]

Jane Withnolastname wrote:

On Sat, 09 Aug 2003 14:12:55 +0100, Jim Dabell
<ji********@jim dabell.com> wrote:

Jane Withnolastname wrote:

I had to substitute something in the page so that it would
a)display as I wanted, b)Validate. So I chose to obfuscate it
with JavaScript.
Why? Validation for the sake of it is useless.

The page in question was bragging about how every page in my site
validated

What is there to brag about? That'd be like me bragging my C++ doesn't
generate any compiler warnings. A worthy goal usually, but nothing
less than is expected from someone with adequate skills.

From the sounds of it, a simple <p> element would have done the job,
and would have demonstrated better appreciation for what the Web is about.
Therefore, the page HAD to validate, or I would have looked
like a complete idiot! :)

I hate to break it to you, but ...

--
Joel.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Jane Withnolastname <Ja************ **********@yaho o.com> wrote:

Heh. The page in question was bragging about how every page in my site
validated and if your browser can't read it then your browser does not
meet the standards of the W3C. Therefore, the page HAD to validate, or
I would have looked like a complete idiot! :)

It seems that you decided to do something worse, namely intentionally
distribute false information. In another posting in this thread, you even
wrote that you don't know that scripting can be turned off in IE 6. Let me
guess... you never looked at the security settings?

It is dangerous nonsense to claim that validity implies conformance to W3C
"standards" . It is also dangerous nonsense to claim that conformance to
W3C "standards" implies that the page works on all browsers. You are now
telling that you have a page that combines these two claims, apparently as
the sole purpose of the page.

You simply do not even know what validation is. Sorry if this sounds like
a slap on your face, but you seem to be illusioned and eager to propagate
the illusion. For a brief explanation of what validation is, see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/validation.html

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Jane Withnolastname pounced upon this pigeonhole and pronounced:

<snip>

Uh, no. I design my site for IE6 and that's it.
But it is so simple to design for all.
As far as I can tell,
you can't turn JS off in IE6 (maybe it's buried somewhere, but I
remember you used to be able to turn it off in Options, and it's not
there now). I don't use Java or Flash.
I would not say it is buried, and if you had ever looked at the options
and settings dialogs, you would have found it. See this page that I put up
for some newbie friends. Scroll down just a bit; it's called Active
Scripting.

http://bshagnasty.home.att.net/brows...gs.htm#options

I have no interest in other browsers since I know FOR A FACT that the
majority of browsers hitting my site are IE4+, which is compatible
with IE6. The minority is Netscape (no other browsers hit my site).
The purpose of the page in question is to tell people using browsers
other than IE why the site looks wrong to them.
If you design carefully, it won't look *wrong*, just maybe different. What
is so wrong with "different? "
Where it is important, I have <NOSCRIPT> tags for the JavaScript
content. Where it's not important, the NS tags simply say to turn on
JavaScript.
I have seen my site rendered in Netscape 4, 6 and 7 and they all look
different. As far as I'm concerned, Netscape can take a flying leap!

Once the masses figure out that IE is not going to be updated until 2005,
and then when they see the cost in new OS and hardware, they're gonna go
get Netscape, or Mozilla, or Opera. Be prepared.

<snip>

--
-bts
-This space intentionally left blank.

[Jane Withnolastname]

On Sat, 09 Aug 2003 11:58:01 -0700, Joel Shepherd
<jo******@ix.ne tcom.com> wrote:

Why? Validation for the sake of it is useless.
The page in question was bragging about how every page in my site
validated

What is there to brag about? That'd be like me bragging my C++ doesn't
generate any compiler warnings. A worthy goal usually, but nothing
less than is expected from someone with adequate skills.

The point is, if your C++ generated compiler warnings on some else's
computer, you would be able to show them that it did not do so when
run through a proper program, which is what I am doing with the page
in question.
From the sounds of it, a simple <p> element would have done the job,
and would have demonstrated better appreciation for what the Web is about.

That makes no sense at all.

Therefore, the page HAD to validate, or I would have looked
like a complete idiot! :)

I hate to break it to you, but ...

.... ah yes, but only to you ... not the folks visiting my site, who
have not seen this thread and actually think I know what I'm doing :)

[Jane Withnolastname]

On Sat, 9 Aug 2003 19:02:58 +0000 (UTC), "Jukka K. Korpela"
<jk******@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:

Jane Withnolastname <Ja************ **********@yaho o.com> wrote:

Heh. The page in question was bragging about how every page in my site
validated and if your browser can't read it then your browser does not
meet the standards of the W3C. Therefore, the page HAD to validate, or
I would have looked like a complete idiot! :)
It seems that you decided to do something worse, namely intentionally
distribute false information. In another posting in this thread, you even
wrote that you don't know that scripting can be turned off in IE 6. Let me
guess... you never looked at the security settings?

I did look at the security settings, but I wasn't looking for
JavaScript. Previously I was able to turn it off in Options. Then
suddenly it wasn't there. Oh well, what do I care? I want it on.
I don't know how you figure I am distributing false information. I'm
not.
It is dangerous nonsense to claim that validity implies conformance to W3C
"standards" . It is also dangerous nonsense to claim that conformance to
W3C "standards" implies that the page works on all browsers. You are now
telling that you have a page that combines these two claims, apparently as
the sole purpose of the page.
I don't know how it is "dangerous" to do any of the above. To the best
of my knowledge my site has never killed anyone. I don't think it's
even so much as maimed a person. The only nonsense is that it's
dangerous.
You are the only one claiming that conformance to the standards
implies the page works on all browsers. I don't care. I want it to
work on IE and I want W3C to tell me that it Validates. That's all I
want. Now I have it.
You simply do not even know what validation is. Sorry if this sounds like
a slap on your face, but you seem to be illusioned and eager to propagate
the illusion. For a brief explanation of what validation is, see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/validation.html

Sorry if this sounds like a slap in your face, but that ain't brief.
And yeah, I do know what Validation is. I checked your definition
there and that's EXACTLY what I use it for. The fact that I get a
little badge to display when I finally get it all right is just a
bonus. If I didn't get the little sticker would I still Validate? Yes.
I don't know how many times I've forgotten to include ALT tags or that
it has found extra /FONT tags that I've lost track of. Oh yeah, it's a
very handy tool.
Do I expect the Validator to tell me if my page looks cool? Not at
all. Are there really people like that out there? Or do you just have
a problem with people who spend all night writing pages and then can't
be bothered to scan them with a fine tooth comb to find one little
mistake?
I often wish there were a good JavaScript Validator, since I run into
a lot of problems with that and it would be nice to have something
point out where I missed a ) or a ; - the Error messages in IE only
take you so far....

[Jane Withnolastname]

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 01:14:36 GMT, Beauregard T. Shagnasty
<a.*********@no where.invalid> wrote:

Uh, no. I design my site for IE6 and that's it.
But it is so simple to design for all.

I disagree.

As far as I can tell,
you can't turn JS off in IE6 (maybe it's buried somewhere, but I
remember you used to be able to turn it off in Options, and it's not
there now). I don't use Java or Flash.

I would not say it is buried, and if you had ever looked at the options
and settings dialogs, you would have found it. See this page that I put up
for some newbie friends. Scroll down just a bit; it's called Active
Scripting.

Well, that's not JavaScript now, is it? Is it? Maybe it is. I don't
know. How could I possibly know? Previous versions called it
JavaScript. If they choose to change what they call it, while the rest
of the world sticks with the same name, I am in the dark.
http://bshagnasty.home.att.net/brows...gs.htm#options

I have no interest in other browsers since I know FOR A FACT that the
majority of browsers hitting my site are IE4+, which is compatible
with IE6. The minority is Netscape (no other browsers hit my site).
The purpose of the page in question is to tell people using browsers
other than IE why the site looks wrong to them.

If you design carefully, it won't look *wrong*, just maybe different. What
is so wrong with "different? "

If I design carefully - do you mean that I have to use one of those
browser identifiers every time I do something? If browser is IE, do
this, but if it's NS do that. Forget it. That makes the page twice as
big. "Different" ? Hardly. That's like saying, well one browser
displays H3 text as 500 pixels tall while another browser shows it as
100 pixels tall. But don't worry, it doesn't look wrong, just
different. That's a poor argument.

Where it is important, I have <NOSCRIPT> tags for the JavaScript
content. Where it's not important, the NS tags simply say to turn on
JavaScript.
I have seen my site rendered in Netscape 4, 6 and 7 and they all look
different. As far as I'm concerned, Netscape can take a flying leap!

Once the masses figure out that IE is not going to be updated until 2005,
and then when they see the cost in new OS and hardware, they're gonna go
get Netscape, or Mozilla, or Opera. Be prepared.

I'm fully prepared for the sloth-like, easily contented masses to do
absolutely nothing. You can design your pages for future editions of
Netscape, Mozilla or Opera, but I'll stick with IE - as I expect
everyone else will, too.