w3c validation

[Athens Collectibles]

Hold on guys, don't shoot me

First, I do care about validation but don't agree to the comment made by Anonimus that "it is better to have a spelling mistake but the w3c validator validate the code". I would prefer a non-validation point rather than having spelling mistakes (I don't claim that there are no spelling mistakes on my site but they are not deliberate just for the sake of the validator).

Second, I am responsible for my site and most of the code on the one with the 237 errors tested by Rob is not under my control. Mind you, following yesterday's posts, I reduced my Zen Cart site's validation errors to 21 and I will set aside some time to go through them as well.

Third, most of the validation errors I had were caused by the character "&" which I replaced with "&" and by not closing image tags with "/".

Fourth, out of the box Zen Cart is valid but we all do modifications, don't we? That refers to Torvista's post, whose add on for adding extra pages I have installed and used extensively. His add on does not cause validation errors but some other add ons do.

Fifth, I do use Firefox and watch the tick/cross icon on the status bar. I use the Web Developer 1.1.8 Firefox add on and the status bar icon shows a green tick mark titled "Standards Compliance Mode", a red exclamation mark titled "CSS Errors" and a green tick mark titled "No JavaScript Errors". When I click on the CSS errors icon, it gives me zero errors but a number of warnings about unknown properties like "border-radius", "box-shadow" etc. I have made a lot of changes to my style sheet and these are among my modifications. I can't see any mark for HTML errors.

Sixth, although as I said above, the Web Developer doesn't show any CSS errors, the W3C CSS validator does find errors when I select it from the Web Developer menus and so does the HTML validator. Are you guys using the same Web Developer add-on or is there something more advanced which I have missed?

Seventh, even though it is painful, I have the latest versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari browsers installed on my computer and I load my pages on each of them to make sure that they look alike in every browser. So far they do and I'm pleased but I can't be sure that everything looks right in older versions (for example IE6) which some viewers are still using.

Eighth (and last), I'm not a programmer/developer, just trying to set up an on line store. "The learning is in the doing" as Rob's signature block says and this is exactly what I'm doing. I really enjoy it and I have gained a lot of knowledge by reading the forums, the FAQs, tutorials and Wiki a lot. Thanks to everyone for contributing to expand my "skills" and wishes for a nice weekend or whatever is left of it.

George (not Athens!)

[Website Rob]

Second, I am responsible for my site and most of the code on the one with the 237 errors tested by Rob is not under my control. Mind you, following yesterday's posts, I reduced my Zen Cart site's validation errors to 21 and I will set aside some time to go through them as well.

Sounds confusing that you are responsible for the site but the errors from coding is not under your control? Many modules have invalid coding, of all kinds and in all coding languages, but again, correcting or not correcting module errors is up to the individual. Now I'm not sure about others but I have only looked at the Home of AthensCollectibles.com; and AthensCollectibles.info since it is redirected to the .com Domain.

With that said, I still see 237 Validation errors. Also see the CSS errors of which, some are valid and should be fixed and some can be ignored.

Example of ones to fix would be:

.bh_map:hover {
opacity:0,8;

should be: opacity:0.8;


.wdk_sidecolumn-shopcategories {
margin-bottom:10px; margin-bottom:0px\9;

should be: ??? as I'm not quite sure what you are doing here


ul#css3menu ul{
-moz-border-radius 0px;

should be: -moz-border-radius: 0px;


And I don't think anyone is trying to shoot the messenger, just that some of us have very strong views on code Validation.

[Athens Collectibles]

Hi Rob,

you are right, the second point is confusing. What happens is:

Athenscollectibles.com (the one with the 237 validation errors) is hosted with an e-commerce platform who provide the templates, shopping cart, payment integration etc. In theory, all one has to do is insert products and start selling. I can not change the source code of the site, I can just add some CSS in the footer to change a few things. As the hosting site does not support Greek properly, I decided to build another bi-lingual site and found Zen Cart as the best solution. I installed Zen Cart and created the...

Athenscollectibles.info which does not redirect to the com, it's a completely separate domain and a different site built on Zen Cart. Validating the info domain gave a couple of hundred errors until I corrected a lot of code yesterday and the errors are now down to 21. As I said, I will look at each of them and make corrections. My aim is to get the number down to zero.

I don't worry about the com domain and its validation errors. As soon as my Zen Cart store (the info domain) is ready to operate and fully tested, I will transfer all products from the com domain to it and completely forget about the present e-commerce host of the com site.

One thing that I can not understand: The Web Developer Tool does not show any CSS error but some warnings only. The W3C validator gives 32 errors, all of them relative to radius borders and web named colors. Here are a few from the top of the list:

Value Error : background-color powderblue is not a color value : powderblue powderblue
Value Error : background-color powderblue is not a color value : powderblue powderblue
Property -webkit-border-top-left-radius doesn't exist : 5px 5px
Property -webkit-border-top-right-radius doesn't exist : 5px 5px
Property -moz-border-radius-topleft doesn't exist : 5px 5px
Property -moz-border-radius-topright doesn't exist : 5px 5px
Property border-top-left-radius doesn't exist in CSS level 2.1 but exists in : 5px 5px
Property border-top-right-radius doesn't exist in CSS level 2.1 but exists in : 5px 5px
Value Error : background-color powderblue is not a color value : powderblue powderblue
Property -webkit-border-radius doesn't exist : 5px 5px
Property -moz-border-radius doesn't exist : 5px 5px

Do they make sense? I have read about rounded borders in the W3C site and their syntax doesn't differ from what I have used. Anyway, I will check again.

I hope that I have now clarified the part about responsibility for the code and wish you a nice week.

With kind regards

[Website Rob]

Don't worry about Warnings regarding; radius, box-shadow, etc. Those are part of CSS3 which is not yet a Registered Standard.

Also, it is confusing when in your sig it says: athenscollectibles.info but the link is to athenscollectibles.com .

[Athens Collectibles]

How the fk did I do it?

Thanks for telling me, it's corrected now!