Re: Some questions about this list

Thank you for the response.

Although I may be biased (My bias comes from working with people with
disabilities.) regarding the validation of web pages, I honestly feel that
valid HTML leads to a page design that is not browser specific.  Bells and
Whistles are great for a site that is targeted for a specific audience.

Personally, as a small Web Presence Provider, I use LYNX frequently to
browse the web.  Especially when I'm looking for specific information and
could care less about the graphics on a particular page.  I also get quite
disturbed in waiting for a lot of graphics to download (when using my
Windows based browser) before I can find the link to get to the area of the
site that I need (or want).

Even building a page to valid HTML and the use of style sheets can lead to a
bad or "Browser Specific" site.  For instance, if you browse my site,
(http://www.ntyc.net) you'll find the navigation buttons are defined in a
Style Sheet.  I've made a mistake in the display of the text in the buttons.
If your browser is set to _not_ display graphics, you won't be able to see
the text in the buttons as I've used white text.  However, the site is quite
navigable with LYNX, or a browser that doesn't support Style Sheets.

I've noticed that some of the replies implied that the W3 validator was only
for HTML 4.0, however, depending on the "Doctype" selected, the page can be
validated against all sorts of HTML versions, even some Microsoft and
Netscape specific versions.

Some web authoring tools will place a version 2.0 or 3.2 Doctype tag, yet
allow the author to use (through wizards and built-in tools) to use tags
that are only compatible with version 4.0.

I guess it only proves to confuse us to build a good site.


Paul Rudolf paul(at)ntyc.net
Personal Software Systems

http://www.ntyc.net

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