Code added to my XHTML source files giving problems

[Leif]

Hello All,

Last week (11 Nov 05) with the Subject header: "XHTML 1.0 Strict validation
problem", I tried to describe a validation problem with text added to my
source files in XHTML.

I was asked to publish the code by several members of this group, but
hesitated initially as I was not sure my organisation would allow/accept it,
however here it is:

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

If you try to validate the page using the bottom left URL marked XHTML you
will discover that the page fails to validate due to an error on line 79
column 85 concerning the attribute autocomplete="Off".

However, as maintainer of this page I can assure everybody that I have never
used this attribute. The source file do certainly not have this attribute,
so it must be added by somebody or something else ??? Who, what and why ???

I have also noted that most of URL's have got something added like the
following:
?tsfsg=c13c0c805f0331c7eb1d7d5e78b6ba94, which is alsocompletely unknown to
me.

Last but not least I am not able to see the source code using menu
View/source as normal (browser ie version 6.0 sp2).

Thanks for any clarification you can provide.

[Andreas Prilop]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, Leif wrote:

Last week (11 Nov 05) with the Subject header: "XHTML 1.0 Strict validation
problem", I tried to describe a validation problem with text added to my
source files in XHTML.
http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

With an image like http://www.npc.nato.int/img/630.gif
what's the point of validation?

--
Netscape 3.04 does everything I need, and it's utterly reliable.
Why should I switch? Peter T. Daniels in <news:sci.lang>

[Spartanicus]

"Leif" <ln**@skynet.be> wrote:

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

If you try to validate the page using the bottom left URL marked XHTML you
will discover that the page fails to validate due to an error on line 79
column 85 concerning the attribute autocomplete="Off".

However, as maintainer of this page I can assure everybody that I have never
used this attribute. The source file do certainly not have this attribute,
Sure it does, on the form element.

If you haven't placed it there then the application that you are using
to produce the HTML may have inserted it. If so, reconfigure or ditch
the software.
Last but not least I am not able to see the source code using menu
View/source as normal (browser ie version 6.0 sp2).

Get a proper browser, alternatively empty your cache.

--
Spartanicus

[Stephen Poley]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:56:16 +0100, "Leif" <ln**@skynet.be> wrote:

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

If you try to validate the page using the bottom left URL marked XHTML you
will discover that the page fails to validate due to an error on line 79
column 85 concerning the attribute autocomplete="Off".

However, as maintainer of this page I can assure everybody that I have never
used this attribute. The source file do certainly not have this attribute,
so it must be added by somebody or something else ??? Who, what and why ???

It's there all right:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...pe=Inline&ss=1

look at the source for line 75.

While you're at it, could you do a bit of reading up on flexible design?
You're wasting one hell of a lot of space at present:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/misc/nato.jpg

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

[Leif]

"Spartanicus" <in*****@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:9q********************************@news.spart anicus.utvinternet.ie...

"Leif" <ln**@skynet.be> wrote:

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

If you try to validate the page using the bottom left URL marked XHTML you
will discover that the page fails to validate due to an error on line 79
column 85 concerning the attribute autocomplete="Off".

However, as maintainer of this page I can assure everybody that I have
never
used this attribute. The source file do certainly not have this attribute,
Sure it does, on the form element.

If you haven't placed it there then the application that you are using
to produce the HTML may have inserted it. If so, reconfigure or ditch
the software.

I am using notepad as editor and a graphical package called PhotoImpact and
thats it.

Last but not least I am not able to see the source code using menu
View/source as normal (browser ie version 6.0 sp2).
Get a proper browser, alternatively empty your cache.

This can't be a valid solution as I said already above. I assure you that
these attributes are not in the source files on the web server. Anyway thank
you for the answer.

--
Spartanicus

[Leif]

With an image like http://www.npc.nato.int/img/630.gif
what's the point of validation?

--
Netscape 3.04 does everything I need, and it's utterly reliable.
Why should I switch? Peter T. Daniels in <news:sci.lang>

Sorry and with all respect, I did not get the point you are trying to
conveye to me.

[Leif]

> While you're at it, could you do a bit of reading up on flexible design?

You're wasting one hell of a lot of space at present:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/misc/nato.jpg

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

Okay I got it, thanks

[Darin McGrew]

[attributions restored]

Andreas Prilop <nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote:

With an image like http://www.npc.nato.int/img/630.gif
what's the point of validation?

Leif <ln**@skynet.be> wrote: Sorry and with all respect, I did not get the point you are trying to
conveye to me.

That image is a picture of text: "Loading menu... If not browser supported,
please use our Sitemap for navigation"

To me, that message indicates problems with the site that are much deeper
than validation errors. Perhaps Andreas had similar thoughts.
--
Darin McGrew, mc****@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da***@htmlhelp.com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"It's bad luck to be superstitious."

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, Leif wrote:

....

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm However, as maintainer of this page I can assure everybody that I have never
used this attribute. The source file do certainly not have this attribute,
so it must be added by somebody or something else ??? Who, what and why ???
Is this being served-out by some server-side processor, that's
mangling your original source before sending it out to the web?

For example, inserting the snippet of code for the google search?

For example, sticking random numbers onto all the URLs in order to
make the site cache-hostile? As if these HTTP response headers
weren't bad enough:

Server: webserver
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Last-Modified: Fri Nov 18 19:21:39 2005
....
Pragma: no-cache

- claiming that the page was last modified just seconds before it was
retrieved, but had already expired in the last millennium, and so
on...
I have also noted that most of URL's have got something added like the
following:
?tsfsg=c13c0c805f0331c7eb1d7d5e78b6ba94, which is alsocompletely unknown to
me.
Quite.
Last but not least I am not able to see the source code using menu
View/source as normal (browser ie version 6.0 sp2).
Get a proper web browser and developer tools, such as Mozilla with the
web developer toolbar. Design for the web, not for MSIE.
Thanks for any clarification you can provide.

Design a less hostile web page.

Do a sanity check with a text browser:

| Powered by Google logo

No, it's not powered by the Google logo...

| Get Acrobat Reader logo

No, I don't want the logo, thank you. This makes no sense.
At least, on the text browser it was possible to identify the link to
the site map - which is more than can be said for the graphical view.
Oh, I begin to get it - this javascript stuff that's called out from
the end of the page, like:

<script type='text/javascript'
src='../scr/menu.js?tsfsg=e4431f1eb17303a6df63440dd70d239a'></script>

When the browser (in this case Mozilla) attempts to retrieve the URL
of the script, the server sends it a 302 redirection, along with a
cookie: the redirection is to the URL of an HTML page and, not
surprisingly, Mozilla throws a javascript error when fed with an HTML
page instead of javascript.

HTTP/1.1 302 OK
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: close
Server: webserver
Set-Cookie:
st8id=6a9a38d9b6bfb7cc8891d96d068d72d8.00.a1d0f448 0995293c59f3758d7
0e2feed.AAjLhk3FVSGNpwCAXfBknKUwv6yofN7m1u8M55u+WC c18yqd9m0jWDFeNZ8j64QSxj7S9q1
7N+GH7mqwEwnvhjEX0ZlE51PukdwSs3FE5uCF7uda3nJnPv7vL L7UZTPE14rfoyFHP5akudnzytY2rp
z8ZJoJTj503DID1GNOEBZexQH/N6azB34TE58=; domain=.npc.nato.int; path=/
Accept-Ranges: none
Location:
http://www.npc.nato.int/?tsfsg=9a5b8...40b9f7e175f336
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is an HTML page, not javascript
What an enormous effort to achieve hostile results! And I'll bet it's
a lot worse under the covers than we can see from the outside.

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, Stephen Poley wrote:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/misc/nato.jpg

Or in my case

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/tests/npc.jpg

[Leif]

>

To me, that message indicates problems with the site that are much deeper
than validation errors. Perhaps Andreas had similar thoughts.
--
Darin McGrew, mc****@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da***@htmlhelp.com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"It's bad luck to be superstitious."

The intention was to provide an alternative for people, who do not accept
Javascript in their browsers. The image is normally covered by a menu and
appears only if client-side Javascript is not available.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

"Leif" <ln**@skynet.be> wrote:

The intention was to provide an alternative for people, who do not accept
Javascript in their browsers. The image is normally covered by a menu and
appears only if client-side Javascript is not available.

Do you think that an image with text "Loading menu... If not browser
supported, please use our Sitemap for navigation" is useful to those people?
Then there _are_ serious problems.

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

[Stan Brown]

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:56:16 +0100 from Leif <ln**@skynet.be>:

I was asked to publish the code by several members of this group, but
hesitated initially as I was not sure my organisation would allow/accept it,
however here it is:

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

If you try to validate the page using the bottom left URL marked XHTML you
will discover that the page fails to validate due to an error on line 79

Seems to me you've got bigger problems. I see a menu down the left, a
Google search bar at the right, and a big white space in the middle.

Oh yes, and at the top I see "Loading menu ... If not browser
supported, use out Sitemap for navigation."

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you

[Stan Brown]

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:00:02 +0100 from Leif <ln**@skynet.be>:

The intention was to provide an alternative for people, who do not accept
Javascript in their browsers. The image is normally covered by a menu and
appears only if client-side Javascript is not available.

Instead of providing a broken interface (one that requires
Javascript), with an error message that doesn't even admit that's the
problem -- why not just fix the interface? Make the site navigation
work without Javascript.

<boilerplate>
Even if you don't care about the millions of people with Javascript
turned off, you _should_ care about the fact that search engines
won't index pages that require Javascript navigation.
</boilerplate>

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you

[Stan Brown]

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:56:16 +0100 from Leif <ln**@skynet.be>:

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that Javascript navigation may
actually be illegal on the above Web site, since it's NATO and many
of the member countries have legislation about accessibility.

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't live in Europe where (I'm told) those
laws exist. Can anyone provide more information?

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Stan Brown <th************@fastmail.fm> wrote:

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that Javascript navigation may
actually be illegal on the above Web site, since it's NATO and many
of the member countries have legislation about accessibility.

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't live in Europe where (I'm told) those
laws exist. Can anyone provide more information?

Last time I checked, the USA was a member of NATO, and there is legislation
there ("Section 508") on accessibility. It might apply, since I think NATO is
in part funded by the US federal government.

JavaScript navigation as such is not prohibited, but:

"When pages utilize scripting languages to display content, or to create
interface elements, the information provided by the script shall be
identified with functional text that can be read by assistive technology."
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?...tent&ID=12#Web

See also explanations of this at:
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm

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

[Stephen Poley]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 20:00:44 +0100, Stephen Poley
<sb******************@xs4all.nl> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:56:16 +0100, "Leif" <ln**@skynet.be> wrote:

http://www.npc.nato.int/htm/home.htm

If you try to validate the page using the bottom left URL marked XHTML you
will discover that the page fails to validate due to an error on line 79
column 85 concerning the attribute autocomplete="Off".

However, as maintainer of this page I can assure everybody that I have never
used this attribute. The source file do certainly not have this attribute,
so it must be added by somebody or something else ??? Who, what and why ???

It's there all right:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...pe=Inline&ss=1

look at the source for line 75.

While you're at it, could you do a bit of reading up on flexible design?
You're wasting one hell of a lot of space at present:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/misc/nato.jpg

By a remarkable coincidence, the copy of Computable (Dutch IT magazine)
that has just dropped on my doormat includes a double-page spread on how
NATO is going to improve the flexibility of its IT. Sample quote: "We
want to get away from specialised systems with little standardisation
and hardly any support for interworking and data interchange" (my
translation).

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

[Andreas Prilop]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, Leif wrote:

With an image like http://www.npc.nato.int/img/630.gif
what's the point of validation?

Sorry and with all respect, I did not get the point you are trying to
conveye to me.

Validating is purely formalistic. What do you (and your visitors!)
get with formally valid pages when there are fundamental flaws
in accessibility?

--
Netscape 3.04 does everything I need, and it's utterly reliable.
Why should I switch? Peter T. Daniels in <news:sci.lang>