Validator warns of Byte-Order Mark

Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

Validator warns of Byte-Order Mark

Gemini23

5:50 pm on Jan 8, 2009 (gmt 0)

I have recently re-launched a website using Microsoft Expression 2 and am having good serps results with it. BUT when I run the wc3 validation I get the following...
Byte-Order Mark found in UTF-8 File.
The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.

Is that because Expression 2 is relatively new or nothing to do with it? The validation also highlights errors - ie. missing " but when I check the web page the " are there...

The Expression file begins:-
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

Is it usual to expect 117 errors? or do I need to make modifications

commanderW

12:14 am on Jan 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Hi Gemini - That Byte Order Mark is a wayof saving a file in the utf-8 format. I forget what it does right now (google this forum though). You can save your files in utf-8 with no BOM.

I don't have Expressions. I'm on a Mac using Textwrangler. In preferemces you should find settings for saving and opening files in your editor. In Textwrangler I have the choice to save as "unicode (utf-8)", and "unicode (utf-8 no BOM)". If you change it and keep getting the warning for the same file, just copy and paste to a new file saved properly and give that file the old name.

As for the 117 errors, well, it's possible to get down to 0. I fix every error on the W3C validator, and bring my pages down to 0 errors. I am, as my Mexican co-workers never tire of pointing out, "pendejo", and If I can do it, anyone can !

It really is important to eliminate these errors, because it's hard to troubleshoot CSS when there are errors in the HTML.

[edited by: commanderW at 12:19 am (utc) on Jan. 10, 2009]

Gemini23

11:43 am on Jan 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks CommanderW I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I certainly can understand correcting errors that are found... BUT

The validation highlights errors in yellow I think - ie. missing " but when I check the web page the " are there... and there are numerous 'errors' of that type.. I just don't know where to go with that....

tedster

2:40 pm on Jan 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Validator error tend to cascade - that is, early problems on the page generate later apparent problems that are only a kind of echo, caused by the first error. So even with 100 plus errors, if you start with the earliest one and then run the validator again, you often find that the number of errors reduces quickly. ?Maybe 5 or 10 total fixes can take care of the entire thing.

steve

5:19 pm on Jan 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Google "expression web" + BOM, its a known problem with EW.

I think it was discussed a while ago in the WYSIWYG forum - [webmasterworld.com...]

/Steve

Gemini23

8:43 pm on Jan 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the input.... I notice that IF I change the validation type it can reduce the number of errors down to 40... ie. html strict.. BUT
TWO Questions:
1. which one of these validation types should I be aiming for?

2. WC3 tells me that a " is missing on line number xyz but when I look there the " is NOT missing... how do I rectify that?

g1smd

9:40 pm on Jan 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Some windows systems save "Unicode" files as UTF-16-LE (with BOM) even when you might have expected UTF-8.

I use HTML 4.01 Transitional for almost everything; only occasionally HTML 4.01 Strict.

The 'missing quote' error is probably caused by an error in a previous line.

tedster

10:19 pm on Jan 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

1. which one of these validation types should I be aiming for?

I recommend html 4.0 strict (or even transitional if you must) in most cases. See this discussion Why most of us should NOT use XHTML [webmasterworld.com]

2. WC3 tells me that a " is missing on line number xyz but when I look there the " is NOT missing... how do I rectify that?

If this is the first error in the report and not the result of an error cascade, then know that there IS a missing " mark. Maybe you have a double ' mark instead, or maybe you have a curly quote, or maybe you're looking at the wrong part of the line of code. But something is definitely missing.

By the way, missing quote marks can be one of the most problematic errors for search engine indexing, so you really want to get that one fixed.

Gemini23

10:10 pm on Jan 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

YAY! Having spent the best part of two days working on this.. I have reduced the errors.. in html Transitional... to 0!
The document located at yxz was successfully checked as HTML 4.01 Transitional. This means that the resource in question identified itself as "HTML 4.01 Transitional" and that we successfully performed a formal validation using an SGML, HTML5 and/or XML Parser(s) (depending on the markup language used).

Should I display the WC3 code and symbol? or does it have no serps value at all?
(I did a quick HTML Strict and I have 40 errors... but hey I did start with 117)

g1smd

10:47 pm on Jan 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

No SERPs value in using the logo. I occasionally use the logo with the "check referrer" syntax, simply so the site owner can easily check their pages for code errors from time to time.

[edited by: g1smd at 11:02 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2009]

Gemini23

10:51 pm on Jan 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

I have just listened to a Matt Cutts video saying essentially the same.. work on good content etc.. as about 40% of 'good content' websites have errors in them and impossible to remove them all..