FP 2003 & W3C

[Lee]

Hello,
I am very new to Frontpage and still experimenting to see how things work. I
created a personal website, no strange code as I no nothing about HTML etc. I
then went to W3C to validate the HTML code - it was recommended - but this
just reports untold HTML errors when valitating by URL.

As FP 2003 creates it's own code why am I getting errors? Is this just
Microsoft and W3C not agreeing on a format or am I missing something here.

Many thanks in advance

 

[Murray]

By creating pages without any knowledge of HTML, you are inadvertantly
making errors of USAGE, and errors of OMISSION, that W3C properly flags. If
you are serious about creating web pages, you will want to learn some HTML,
and some CSS.

A page that doesn't validate is a page that is likely to look different in
different browsers, and on different platforms.

 

[Cheryl D Wise]

FrontPage does not have a valid doctype in its code snippets nor does it
supply one by default. There is a tutorial on creating a valid doctype code
snippet as well as well as others on how to use structural mark-up and
styles in FrontPage 2003 that will help you learn to use FrontPage to create
a valid website at http://mvp.wiserways.com

--
Cheryl D Wise
FrontPage MVP
http://by-expression.com
Online Instructor led training at http://starttoweb.com
Next session starts Aug 20,2006 offers classes in CSS and Expression Web
Designer

 

[Thor]

Interesting. Why do you think Microsoft needs to tell us how to create a
valid website? Why doesn't FP create a valid website?

Does this really do that? IOW, is all the rest of the code created by FP
valid?

 

[Cheryl D Wise]

Because FrontPage is an old program as web editors go. There have been of
least 2 versions of Dreamweaver and GoLive since FP 2003 was released.

You can create valid websites with FrontPage but you have to spend some time
learning to use it and not go click happy. When FP 2003 came out only a
relatively small number of people cared about standards and IE owned 90%
plus (reaching 96-98% at times) of the browser market. The web has changed.
I rarely see 1E 5 in my log files while 5.5 and 6 are down to 60% or less
(varies by site) so the importance of standards compliant sites has grown.
Firefox, Opera and Safari how account for as much as 30% of my site
visitors. While IE 7 is making a significant dent and it renders quite
different than earlier versions, more like its competitors than IE6h it is
more standards compliant as well.

--
Cheryl D Wise
FrontPage MVP
http://by-expression.com
Online Instructor led training at http://starttoweb.com
Next session starts Aug 20,2006 offers classes in CSS and Expression Web
Designer

 

[Murray]

FP will not prevent you from doing non-best-practice usages.

Why do you think Microsoft needs to tell us how to create a valid website?

Because a page that validates will likely look consistent from one
browser/platform to another.

is all the rest of the code created by FP valid?

It will be if the operator understands what valid code is, yes.