Re: W3C Standards Compliant

Use of expletives on a public mailing list is pretty sub-optimal 
vocabulary, wouldn't you agree? Since when are companies like Google and 
DICE (never heard of DICE) our technological masters? Chips are for 
eating, not carrying on our shoulders. In a free society, if a citizen's 
main grievance is a general lack of adherence to adhoc lexical standards 
with regards to unregulated public communications, they are doing rather 
well in my opinion. Am I wrong in saying that commercial operations can 
do what they please and if people don't like it they can vote with their 
feet and/ or wallets?

Additionally, it is all very well to claim the high ground of standards 
compliance with plain white pages containing minimal content, and zero 
stylistic formatting, however generally speaking the public at large 
have moved on and prefer to see things like colour, animation, pictures, 
movies, as well as new and interesting interfaces, rather than pages 
designed primarily for a non sentient audience. My brain, for instance, 
appears to have no trouble parsing an ampersand.

Sam


On 10/03/11 11:25, Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
>> From: jzakiya<[e-mail]>
>> I was checking various websites using this W3C validator:
>> http://validator.w3.org
>>      
> In recent months I've been meaning to ask, and this seems an
> appropriate time: Virtually every Web site I've look at, except my
> own on my Unix shell site, and *even* my own PHP output on free
> hosting sites that ad advertisements before or after my
> PHP-generated valid syntax, fails validation. Google is an
> egretious example, the 800 pound gorilla that can do any F**KING
> thing it wants any time it F**KING time it wants because nobody has
> the power to correct it. Also, every job-search Web site I've
> examined so-far (DICE, Monster.Com, craigslist, hotjobs, etc.)
> fails validation. If I *ever* encounter a Web site I didn't create
> myself which passes validation I'm surprised. I've created a Web
> page documenting some of this horridly non-validating HTTP output
> that pretends to be HTML or XHTML:
> http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/NewPub/jobSearch.html
>
> In the apparent war between W3C and the vast majority of commercial
> Websites, who is correct?
>
> Is W3C correct, and all these Websites are broken?
>
> Or are these Websites just fine, and W3C is being pedantic or even
> anal retentive?
>
> Off and on during the past several years I've developed a
> non-validating generic SGML/XML parser. The only legal syntax it
> doesn't understand is SGML null-end-tags, because their syntax
> conflicts with XML's use of self-closing tags.
>
> In the course of trying to use it to parse output from Yahoo,
> Google, and other major Websites, I've needed to modify my parser
> to accept lots of INVALID syntax. The most common cases are:
> - URLs and other property values that aren't enclosed in quotes.
> - Bare ampersands in query strings of URLs not expressed as&amp;
> - Bare brockets as text not expressed as&lt; or&gt;
> - Scripts (usually JavaScript) that aren't contained within comments.
> I thought I had covered all such broken syntax, allowing it to be
> gracefully parsed to create a DOM (parse tree). But last night
> while parsing a job ad downloaded from dice.com I found an open
> brocket immediately followed by a space character, which my parser
> doesn't currently handle, so I need to fake some "plausable" parse
> for the invalid syntax. Here are the original dice URL and the URL
> for applying the W3C validator to it:
>
> http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&dockey=xml/9/d/9d2e5198c1866bf1fe49cb0e9aa302aa@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=PHP&rating=99
> = http://tinyurl.com/4kq8s9d
> (ad for job for Ruby on Rails
>   Position ID: 10203112000007802
>   Dice ID: 10106525)
>
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fseeker.dice.com%2Fjobsearch%2Fservlet%2FJobSearch%3Fop%3D302%26dockey%3Dxml%2F9%2Fd%2F9d2e5198c1866bf1fe49cb0e9aa302aa@endecaindex%26source%3D19%26FREE_TEXT%3DPHP%26rating%3D99&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0
> = http://tinyurl.com/5ucbcxe
> (179 Errors, 99 warnings)
> ..
>      9. Warning Line 172, Column 18: character "<" is the first character
>         of a delimiter but occurred as data
>                          for (i = 1; i<= 3; i++) {
>     10. Warning Line 179, Column 66: cannot generate system identifier for
>         general entity "dockey"
> .. "/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=306&dockey=xml/9/d/9d2e5198c1866bf1fe49cb0e9...
> ..
>     248. Warning Line 1203, Column 149: character "<" is the first
>         character of a delimiter but occurred as data
> .. United States specializing in audit<  http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/section_no...
>
>    
>> and just wanted to congratulate the ruby home site as passing:
>> www.ruby-lang.org
>>      
> Indeed, I checked it just now, and it still passes. It's ironic
> that the Ruby language Web site passes, but an advertiser for job
> for Ruby on rails breaks HTML worse than any other Web page I've
> ever encountered. Too bad the Ruby folks don't enforce standards on
> their users.
>
>    
>> In comparison, those slackers over at www.python.org show 1 error
>> and 1 warning on their site. :-)
>>      
> Not an egregious error at all:
>      1. Error Line 196, Column 30: value of attribute "method" cannot be
>         "POST"; must be one of "get", "post"
>             <form method="POST" action="/3kpoll">
> Should be easy to fix if somebody can get the attention of the Web
> author/manager there.
>
>    
>> Here are some other sites that pass 100%:
>> www.msn.com
>> www.firefox.com
>> www.mozilla.com
>>      
> Those three confirmedm firefox&mozilla as expected but msn rather a
> pleasant surprise, but:
>
>    
>> www.oasis-open.org
>>      
> Error found while checking this document as XHTML 1.0 Transitional!
>     Result: 1 Error, 1 warning(s)
>     Address: http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php__________
>      1. Warning Line 242, Column 40: character "&" is the first character
>         of a delimiter but occurred as data
> ..               Conference Proceedings&  Webcast Available</a></div>       <div
> Another stupid failure-to-convert from text to HTML text, easily
> fixed if somebody can get the attention of the Web author/manager
> there.
>
>    
>> And a shocker,  www.openoffice.org has 4 ERRORS! (as of July 7, 2009)
>>      
> It's gotten worse since then:
> Errors found while checking this document as XHTML 1.0 Transitional!
>     Result: 10 Errors, 3 warning(s)
>
>    
>> Also, some prominent sites that have errors:
>> www.gmail.com
>> www.yahoo.com
>> www.google.com
>>      
> Yeah, I noticed those already myself. Even worse, JavaScript isn't
> available here (VT100 term on FreeBSD Unix) so gmail doesn't work
> at all here, because it absolutely requires JavaScript. Facebook
> likewise, except at least it recognizes te problem and redirects me
> to an error page right at the top. Correction: The last twenty
> times I tried over the past several years, it redirected me to
>   "We're not cool enough to support your web browser."
> But when I tried it just now, for the very first time ever I get a
> login form in lynx. Unfortunately I've never been able to get a
> FaceBook account, even from a public-access Microsoft-IE, so I
> can't test FaceBook login from here. MySpace by comparison worked
> fine the last time I tried it from lynx.
>
>    
>> But maybe it would be a nice see Merb, Ramaze, Sinatra or....
>> used to write a little web app to track and list W3C
>> (non)conformance of sites (if such a project doesn't already
>> exist),  Let's out the bad and hail the good!
>>      
> I have IMO a better idea: If and when http://TinyURL.Com/NewEco
> gets enough users, I plan to actually *pay* users (not cash, just
> labor credits, i.e. funny money that can be used to pay for metered
> WebSite usage and/or hire others to do contract work) to report
> good/bad Web sites (to keep my database up to date) and to pester
> managers of bad Web sites to fix their egregious HTML or English
> mistakes. The first targets of intense pestering would most likely
> be Google.Com, Yahoo.Com, DICE.Com, and Monster.Com. But pestering
> by random nobodies wouldn't convince those big Web sites to fix
> their mistakes, so I would use http://TinyURL.Com/RLLink to locate
> chains of people (as in "seven degrees of freedom") from we who are
> complaining to they who need to pay attention to our complaints. If
> the WebMasters' best friends start complaining to the WebMasters
> that the Web sites is so grossly bad that *they* (best friends of
> the WebMasters) are getting pestered and begged to please pester
> the actual WebMaster, maybe they (WebMasters) finally pay attention
> to our complaints.
>
> Which brings me back to my current problem with dice.com: The
> reason I'm currently working on building software to harvest job
> ads from job-search Web sites and filter them to eliminate jobs for
> which the user is not qualified, is not just because it'd be useful
> to me personally, but also because I believe that will be so useful
> to the 25% of adult population that are either unemployed or
> underemployed or "no longer in the workforce" or otherwise not
> employed to their desires, that users will start flocking to
> http://TinyURL.Com/NewEco in order to get access to job-ad
> filtering, and will find the service worth the labor-cost needed to
> use it, hence will build up user base of people willing to do work
> for me in exchange for using my service, such work including
> finding chains of people from here to bad WebMasters and pestering
> through such chains to friends of the bad WebMasters.
>
> Note: I'm opposed to harassing innocent people. But in any free
> society I believe we have a right to "redress of grievience" by
> petitionning our de jure (goverment) masters and also by
> petitionning our de facto (technological, business) masters such as
> Google and DICE. If our masters claim that our petitions for
> redress of grievance is "harassing" to them, they are mistaken, and
> should "mend their ways" rather than "shoot the messenger".
>
> I hope that http://TinyURL.Com/NewEco + http://TinyURL.Com/RLLink
> will provide a cybernetic means for effective redress of grievience.
>
>