White space handling

so many errors! and warnings!

[webmstr]

I checked a site I did through the validator and I am sooo ashamed! It is pitiful. I built the site in Dreamweaver MX, and there are over 200 errors and about that many warnings. The site looks good, and seems to load well. But I am embarrassed about the behind the scenes part lol.

Would anyone be willing to check out the site and see what they think?TIA

[bill]

Would anyone be willing to check out the site and see what they think?TIA

Sorry we don't do site reviews on WebmasterWorld. However, you can certainly work through the errors from the validator [validator.w3.org] and fix any errors you find. Often just fixing a few small errors can eliminate a whole bunch of page problems at once.

[webmstr]

Wow, I did what you have suggested. Actually I have been working on it for the past couple of hours. I now have no errors, no warnings and my pages validate with a big green checkmark! Woo hoooo

[larryhatch]

I went thru all this. Start with the very first error shown.
Often, that first error will cause a cascade of others.
Its virtually impossible to work backwards and get anywhere.

The error messages given by W3C are cryptic, nearly worthless at times.
Things I FINALLY figured out and fixed were <font> tags with too many or not enough
closing </font> statements.
Another one is to open a font in one <div> or <table> and closing it in the next one.

Everything above applies to <table> and the like. For each one opened, you close one,
and in reverse order, being careful not to let these elements overlap.

This will be much clearer if you hand code your html.
If you let Dreamweaver or similar applications do your coding for you,
there isn't much help I can offer. Those are notorious for un-validatable code. -Larry

[webmstr]

Didn't have any problems with tags not being closed. most of the errors were either white space, alt tags, summary atributes and background colors for the css. I can't hand code. Not that good of a programmer, and it would take me foreeever. So I have to rely on Dreamweaver. I am more of a visual designer anyway, and have to see what I like first and then go back and check the code. Might sound kind of backwards, but that it just doesn't make sense to me to be able to write program on a page and then go and see what it does and go back and change code, etc etc. I wish I could think that well lol.

[bill]

Glad that worked out for you!
The W3C errors can seem quite cryptic in some cases, I agree. If you get stuck you can always ask here. As long as you do the basic validation yourself and remove all of the easy errors it's rare that you get stuck with an error can't figure out. A lot of the more complicated errors you see are caused by the cascade. Eliminate the root causes and those other errors ofter disappear.