Myth's observations from another thread

[busyglen]

I have started a new thread for this as it is a change of topic from `Englands Green and Pleasant Land on the Chatter page.

Myth, I have checked my Frontpage and `yes' that error was a typo on my part.

I am also a bit confused about the `link colour'. Of course you were not referring to the `page' colour, which I now realise, but I don't quite understand what you are saying. Ah.....yes I do now! I decided to pause here and go back to my `working' pages whilst on-line, and the link goes black with yellow lettering....is that what you meant? I didn't realise this as when I view it directly on-line from the ULR, I don't get that. I shall have to work out how to correct that, as I don't like it at all! Thank you.

Glenys

[MarkJ]

Is this your Coastguards site we are talking about Glenys?
All wysiwyg website building tools seem to add their own little anomolies - I have used a selection of them over the years - Dreamweaver, Netscape Composer, Nvu and many others. I find that I have to go through the code by hand afterwards and remove quite a lot of little quirks - most are totally harmless though.
Never having used FrontPage, I suspect there is a way to change the link colours there - all the wysiwyg editors I have seen allow you to change that. It depends on how the page is built.

I am a great believer in the w3c validator myself. Whilst it will not pick up unintentional errors of the sort Myth mentioned in the other thread (strange heights for instance), it does ensure the code can be viewed by any compliant browser.
It will not mean the page is easy to use though - a couple of my own pages are real pigs to use, basically because they involve a huge list of data which means a long scroll. But they are w3c compliant. The designer (i.e myself) is at fault there for failing to divide the data into manageable chunks! Like everything else, I will get round to sorting it.......
I actually hate working with html and designing things

Mark

[Mythology]

Glenys, if that bit is all that's worrying you, stop right there, and relax, you don't need to do anything - the problem is my end.

I said:
"It's only a "problem" because of the settings in my Opera browser. I can tell it to use the author's link colours or tell it to use my own link colours. If I tell it to use my own link colours and set it to, say, blue, the commonest choice, then on a page which has blue boxes with yellow links, I won't see the links! So, I've left it set to use the author's colours - the problem with that being that, on a page like yours where no link colour is set, it just defaults to your text colour and the links show as black."

I also said:
"It's not a browser that I use a lot ..."

[Mythology]

If I did use it a lot, then perhaps I'd have come across this before!

On doing a bit of experimenting, I find that the little tick box labelled "My link style" in Opera does not mean what it says. What it actually means is "My link style if nothing is defined on the page".
So, if I tick the "My link style" box, on *your* page I then get the links in blue, except for the ones I've visited, which are in purple, because those are the colours *I* chose.
But if I visit a page where the author *has* set specific link colours, I do *not* get mine, I get theirs, so the potential problem of blue link text in a blue box does not arise.
But I'm not going on the Opera forum to tell them it's a lousy bit of wording - they'll send a lynch mob round.

[Mythology]

"I am a great believer in the w3c validator myself."
So am I for my own stuff, Mark, wouldn't dream of putting a page online without using it first, but ...

The problem with zillions of pages made with web page creators is that there's no DOCTYPE, so it falls over straight away, and I worry that an inexperienced person to whom much of the resulting "not valid" message is liable to be incomprehensible might be put off making web pages for life, when, in fact, they haven't done a bad job!

(continues)

[Mythology]

Now, what, I wonder, is Glenys going to make of ...
"The DOCTYPE Declaration was not recognized or is missing. This probably means that the Formal Public Identifier contains a spelling error, or that the Declaration is not using correct syntax."

(A strong Sheppey headache starts here )

Then a large heading in a threatening red box that says ...
"This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)!"

(Oh heck - I don't know what this is all about but I must have made a complete mess of things)

(continues)

[Mythology]

Then a string of messages including this one relating to the very simple accidental <d/div> instead of </div> ...
"You have used the element named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not define an element of that name. This error is often caused by:
* incorrect use of the "Strict" document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the "Frameset" document type to get the "<frameset>" element),
* by using vendor proprietary extensions such as "<spacer>" or "<marquee>" (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead).
* by using upper-case tags in XHTML (in XHTML attributes and elements must be all lower-case."

(Keep her away from that new bridge, folks, we don't want a suicide on our hands)

[MarkJ]

Yep, you are correct Myth. I can remember the first time I used the validator - literally hundreds of errors on a really simple basic page. It was something I did for an Open Uni course. Once I declared the doctype, I was left with a couple of minor errors only.
So, as you say, the doctype declaration is a major issue for most sites when it comes to w3c validation. It doesn't mean the page is worng or won't display, simply that the w3c standard needs that declaration - which is where most sites are going to fall down.
Hope Glenys doesn't let it worry her too much I have played with the Coastguard site in the past for Glenys and found it quite useable myself.
Strange that Frontpage fails to add the doctype - most of the wysiwyg tools add that for you I have found.

All good fun though isn't it?

Mark

[Mythology]

It is indeed - keeps us on our toes, doesn't it?

I'm (very slowly) transcribing a little book at the moment. It dawned on me, that, as this would have about 80 pages in the same style, it at last gave me a reason to try CSS, using an external stylesheet. Needless to say, me being me, although I'd memorised various bits about CSS that I'd seen here and there, I hadn't actually read up on it properly - "Give it a bash and see what happens" is my philosophy with most things.

Well, you should have seen the result when I submitted what appeared to me to be be a perfectly good page. A whole string of error messages which I looked at and scratched my head.

(continues)

[Mythology]

For example, a message from the checker about not having a "Generic family" in my font definition. Huh? Georgia is a web safe font, what's all this about? Quick look at W3C pages on CSS - ah! We have to put "serif" on the end, OK, that's that bit solved. Now, what's all this about having no "color" with my "background-color"? Hmmm ... OK, I've read the bit about that and I don't understand it ... there seem to be various options ... let's try "transparent"... Oh dear, no, it doesn't like that at all, what else can we try - how about "inherit"? Ah - yes, that works ... Lord knows what it *means*, but adding "color: inherit" in all the code lines where the validator is telling me off about it keeps it happy and doesn't have any adverse effect, so that's what we do in future, OK?