Hi there,

The content on this blog is all archival, it's no longer active and you won't be able to post comments or trackbacks. If you're looking for active content from the same source, you should check out Nick's Vox blog.

« Apple-y Goodness! | Main | Weekend In NY »

Validity != Standards Compliance

April 28, 2004

Another amazingly small fact that makes just a little difference (probably not recognizable for many) is the fact that this site now runs in 'Standards Compliance Mode' in Firefox 0.8 as opposed to 'Quirks Mode' in which it used to run. The difference? As explained by Alex some time ago in the TypePad Users Forum, Quirks Mode is used when your site doesn't comply with standards (mozilla standards, at least) and it requires a little more computation on the browser end to figure out exactly what you're trying to convey - it's a little like me throwing a word of German in a mostly normal conversation of English. You'll probably understand the meaning by context but it's not correct Engligh. In the same way, your browser can display your page correctly with errors but it takes a little more work. Standards Mode is used when your page validates to a certain set of stanards - in this case, mozilla standards. Of course, W3C has their own set of validation rules and ways to make sure your site validates to their standards. W3C has the 'official' set of standards (I'm using XHTML and CSS2) but they don't make the browsers and their standards don't have to be used by anyone.
Personally, I think W3C should stop wallowing in their standards and make a set of plugins to describe HTML, XHTML, CSS, CSS2 and other forms of validity and interpretation. As well as plugins, they should create a free set of libraries, the UBPI (Universal Browser Plugin Interface), which accepts these plugins for the browsers. Browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer simply have to use this free library and forget about using their coders for creating functionally inept interpreters (I'm looking your way, IE) and perhaps use them for other non-interpreter-intrusive tools and functions.
Of course, my site probably wouldn't work in such a world - the W3C validator shows 90 errors on my site - mostly from mistaking all the ampersands in my MT Comment Template post for entities (if you put © in an html document you get ©) but oh well. The different worlds have different requirements. I'm happy to be satisfying one of them at the moment.

Comments

This post was unumschrankt rubbish!

No! I disagree! I understand it ALL now.

Post a comment

Nick O'Neill

 

 

 

 

 

powered by movabletype