Re: Browsers and syntax errors (Was: Captions for Figures...)

Steinar Bang (steinarb@falch.no)
Fri, 10 Mar 1995 10:06:46 +0500


>> Making browsers forgiving about HTML syntax errors, instead of giving
>> good user feedback, is probably the gravest error committed by the
^about the errors
>> browser writers.

Agh! The point fell out of the paragraph! Mental short circuit, sorry.

> Making the browsers tolerant is essential. Otherwise they would fail
> on all sorts of unexpected bugs in automated scripts. Synthesising
> correct HTML all the time is very tricky.

Depends on what you mean by tolerant. What I was referring to is the
practice of quitely glossing over markup errors (such as missing
closing quotes in attribute literal values), even at the cost of
misinterpreting correct HTML. This is *bad* *bad* *bad*!

> The solution is for people to use Arena which comes up with a Bad
> HTML flag when is gets rubbish. This will at least ensure that the
> companies are keen to have correct HTMl since it gives a bad image
> if their HTML is buggy.

True! But just telling people "Bad HTML" isn't really enough. You need
something like "Bad HTML! Press xxx to see view the HTML
errors!". That would make it easy enough to find the error that the
odd Joe Homepage might take the trouble as well.

> Do you think Microsoft will want to handle the complaint from their
> users if their Word add in keeps lighting up the bad HTML flag? Same
> for the other vendors.

Huh?