front page validation problems

too many unknown elements

[steelrane]

I built a site that I just can't get to work I used many valadation services and they tell me that I have many unknown attributes like "XMLNS" and <!-[if> and <!ENDIF]--> can anyone tell me what this means and should I remove them...? And how do I make the site work in mozilla or netscape it only seems to work in ie!

[bill]

Sounds like you have a bunch of Microsoft Office junk in there. Clean up your HTML with the Microsoft Office HTML Filter (download from MS) or the free HTML Tidy utility.

[steelrane]

I did get tidy but I haven't ran it yet do you have any pointers about using tidy or the ms filter?

[bill]

Ideally you should keep a copy of your original HTML as backup, then just run it. The MS filter can be run in its defaults if I recall correctly. Tidy has a lot of settings, and i haven't run the stand-alone version for quite some time, so you may want to just play around with the settings.

Check the resulting code in a browser, and then run it through the W3C validator to make sure all is well.

...oh and welcome to WebmasterWorld

[steelrane]

I couldn't use msoffice html filter because I have office xp and the filter is for office 2000 so I got an error message when I tried to install it. I have tidy and Iam still trying to figure out how it works maybe I'll try posting a new question about how the tidy software works.

[robert adams]

Did you create this web page in Word or some other MS product?
If so, the best thing to do is start over. Word and other office programs were never intended to create web pages. When they convert to html it is a total mess.
Best is to get a html editor, or if you don't want to learn html, you can get netscape composer and it creates fairly decent html.

luck,
robert

[steelrane]

I made the page in Frontpage and I used Tidy to tell which code should be changed but when I change it I lose most of my page any suggestions?

[robert adams]

My suggestion is don't use Front Page. Use Composer or 1st page or something that writes decent html, then when you tidy it you won't lose all of your code.

robert

[bill]

steelrane I've read through several of your posts in this forum all addressing the same problem but looking at it from different angles. It sounds like you made a bad decision in using a number of FP components that added some messy code. I'm guessing it is the shared borders and themes.

FP will make perfectly validating HTML or XHTML sites if you just start out trying to make a validating site instead of trying to fix something previously where this was not the primary focus. You say you're having problems not only with validating, but even with viewing the site in Mozilla based browsers. It sounds like you might want to take a step back and design a validating, cross browser compatible, template and then put your content into that rather than trying to fix what you have. There is no magic bullet software that will clean up everything for you. You have to recognize these validation issues from the initial design phase and then understand your WYSIWYG's limitations and work around them. It's not really all that difficult, but you may have to change some of your design concepts.

[steelrane]

Thank you I will go back and see where I went wrong. I don't really use any themes or shared borders I use a photo from Photoshop as the background then I make text boxes and picture boxes to build the rest of the site it sounds simple to me.So I guess i'll look back and see what is making my site work like this. I have kept really good records on building the site.
Thanks for your help

[Shadows Papa]

Text boxes and picture boxes aren't part of the FrontPage I know.........
What does create those is MS Word. Probably other stuff.
I've not seen those options in FP - where would they be?

Shadows Papa