is WC3 Wrong?

liunx

Guest
I am getting frustrated because of this:<br />
framespacing="0"<br />
it works! yet WC3 says that it is invalid in HTML 4.01 Frameset and I am wanting to get my pages validated<!--content-->You are looking at the question backwards. You are expecting the HTML 4.01 Specification to be a description of how existing browsers behave. But there are hundreds of different browsers out there. And some, like Braille and audio browsers, are very different from the ubiquitous Microsoft Internet Explorer. Instead, the great minds at the W3C get together and set forth how browsers should behave. And in truth, anything that does not behave that way can no longer be called a browser. All of the major players in the browser market are a part of the W3C and have committed themselves to being complient. (See <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List">http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List</a><!-- m -->.) And browsers do follow the specifications well enough that if you follow the rules your pages will work on all of them. You might not get exactly the effect that you want but you are the only one who will care. Your users will be just as happy.<br />
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On the other hand, if you try to tailor your page to one or a few browsers then you most likely will make a page that fails on quite a few of the others. And most likely they will fail on the browsers used by persons with disabilities, which would put you in violation of the law in certain countries. You do not list your location on your profile, but I'd be willing to bet that your web pages are covered by accessibility laws.<!--content-->accessibility laws? well, I guess that line of code goes<!--content-->Originally posted by alcodes <br />
accessibility laws? well, I guess that line of code goes Not necessarily. That particular attribute is what we might call "wrong but harmless". If your mark up is otherwise valid and you have followed the applicable accessibility guidelines, then you will not hurt anything by adding it.<!--content-->Originally posted by alcodes <br />
and I am wanting to get my pages validated <br />
Yes, but I do want to get my pages validated<!--content-->Originally posted by alcodes <br />
Yes, but I do want to get my pages validated A very honerable goal and one that I share. And to that end I just avoid using frames.<!--content-->The implementation of Frames in the specs are a bit troublesome. Basicly all browsers today breaks the spec, becuse the way it's implemented requires code that would severly slow down the display of webpages and to make matters worse, in complex situations it's not even really clear how things should work.<br />
These problems to a large part is probably due to that frames where partly ignored since the W3C at the time thought that they had several bad traits and should be phased out entirely (that is why frames in HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 tags and attributes only exsists in the Frames and Transitinal DTD, and XHTML 1.1 doesn't have the at all).<br />
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Anyway there is a very old and long bugreport over at Mozilla detailing the problems involved if you are interested <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3655">http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3655</a><!-- m --> , but for most uses it's enough to know that there is a resonably harmless hack that works in basicly all browsers in use today removing borders between the frames, while still only using 1 invalid attribute .<br />
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When I use framesets I use something like this (or the corresponding HTML). This will work in next to all browsers (IE, Mozilla-family as well as Opera, which is 98%+ of the browsers in use).<br />
<br />
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?><br />
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd"><br />
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"><br />
<head><br />
<title></title><br />
<meta name="author" content="Stefan Huszics" /><br />
<meta name="copyright" content="Stefan Huszics" /><br />
<meta name="publisher" content="Stefan Huszics" /><br />
<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href=http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/archive/index.php/"img/page.ico" /><br />
</head><br />
<frameset cols="100, 1*" border="0"> <!-- border="0" is a bugfix for IE, NS as well as Opera --><br />
<frame name="nav" src=http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/archive/index.php/"nav.html" frameborder="0" marginwidth="1" marginheight="1" scrolling="auto" /><br />
<frame name="main" src=http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/archive/index.php/"home.html" frameborder="0" marginwidth="1" marginheight="1" scrolling="auto" /><br />
<noframes><br />
<body><br />
<p><br />
Frames are not working in your Browser.<br /><br />
If you have Frames turned off, please turn it on to view this site.<br />
</p><br />
</body><br />
</noframes><br />
</frameset><br />
</html><br />
<br />
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For the future you might be interested in knowing that farmes will make a comback in XHTML 2.0 as X-frames, which is a modernized version that solve some of the largest culpits that was the reason frames where dropped from the specs to begin with.<!--content-->
 
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