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I now realise that I was taking the validator way too literally at first. I was thinking 'whaddya mean I can't have a body tag in my document?!' Of course once I started to try and fix the 'errors' which I did understand, the others magically disappeared.
Anyway, for a long time it has been my ambition to be able to put one of those cute little validation pics on my site, and my question is...
As has been much discussed, Embedding Flash movies on your page stops it validating. No-one seems to have an answer to this, I know, but can I declare my pages valid, if all is valid apart from the Flash being there? And can I put the cute little pic there without feeling guilty? Does anyone else do it?
If it was up to me I wouldn't bother with flash, but the boss wants it, so it must stay.
Helen.
Most of my pages WOULD validate to HTML 4.01 Strict, except for some third-party scripts that insert some invalid code here and there. I have to use those scripts, so I'm not able to validate like I want to. So, I don't use the image, either.
If you use the "Validates" image and link it properly, and someone clicks the link and it doesn't validate, what impression does that make?
Well, perhaps I'll just 'hide' my flash with javascript like I saw someone suggesting in another thread.
It doesn't seem fair that your pages are valid, but yet they won't validate :(
Perhaps this is the sort of thing digitaltv was getting at in his rant [webmasterworld.com]. I'm not saying I agree with his views but the validator can be extremely frustrating.
It doesn't seem fair that your pages are valid, but yet they won't validate :(
It certainly doesn't seem fair. I mean, you can go through all the turmoil of your first validation, get the hang of it, and write clean code, but sometimes certain limitations just can't be avoided. And then your page doesn't validate. <edit>But, what else is the W3C to do? They really can't give a validation for a "best effort" try; all or nothing is really the only standard they can have.</edit>
But, I'm soon going to be doing a site with nothing but static HTML pages - and my goal is for every page to validate Strict on the first try! :)
H.
[macromedia.com...]
Author Drew McLellan put in some substantial effort into "Embedding Macromedia Flash while Supporting Standards".
I see that Drew firstly came up with a very simple way to do it, but this apparently only works for small flash movies...
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="movie.swf"
width="400" height="300">
<param name="movie" value="movie.swf" />
</object>On my page however, I have a bunch of six small flash movies, around 10k each, and this method works fine for them.
It works in Mozilla and ie, it validates, and I don't have to go into the flash movies themselves and edit them. Do you think it is OK for me to use this method, or does anyone know of any problems with it?
Flash Satay works to a limited extent, but I wouldn't use it. One advantage with flash is that works in any browser with the plugin. Flash Satay breaks when viewing in older browsers such as Netscape 4, so you should test it thoroughly before going live with your changes. Flash is a proprietary technology which goes against the open standards such as HTML, CSS, etc. Validation is always going to be an issue when you're embedding such elements in your pages.
I haven't found anything earth-shaking yet, but knowing that there's active research going on, I figure it's good to stay tuned.
If you do use javascript, does it still direct users to the plug in if they don't have it, in the usual way?
