Validating my HTML
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I wanted to validate my HTMl so I went to the site: http://validator.w3.org. The top line of my html is:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.or
g/TR/html4/loose.dtd">The message I am getting from the validator is:
Byte-Order Mark found in UTF-8 File.
The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.
As far as I can tell, I have no special characters in the file. I would like to fix this error but I have no idea how to do so. I am hoping somebody here can help. Thanks Bob
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I wanted to validate my HTMl so I went to the site: http://validator.w3.org. The top line of my html is:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.or
g/TR/html4/loose.dtd">The message I am getting from the validator is:
Byte-Order Mark found in UTF-8 File.
The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.
As far as I can tell, I have no special characters in the file. I would like to fix this error but I have no idea how to do so. I am hoping somebody here can help. Thanks Bob
1. What editor (or IDE or whatever) did you create the HTML with? 2. What are you looking at it with? If you have a hex editor, have a look at the start of the file. Many "smart" editors don't show you the BOM, and some might even use it intelligently. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994.
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1. What editor (or IDE or whatever) did you create the HTML with? 2. What are you looking at it with? If you have a hex editor, have a look at the start of the file. Many "smart" editors don't show you the BOM, and some might even use it intelligently. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994.
Peter, Thanks for the response. I am on a Windows machine. I am using the version of VI that comes with cygwin. I have also looked at the file by dumping it out with od (also part of cygwin). Neither tool shows and funny characters. I am also wondering, if my HTML goes through the validator with out any errors, does it really matter? Will it improve my search engine ranking? Bob
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Peter, Thanks for the response. I am on a Windows machine. I am using the version of VI that comes with cygwin. I have also looked at the file by dumping it out with od (also part of cygwin). Neither tool shows and funny characters. I am also wondering, if my HTML goes through the validator with out any errors, does it really matter? Will it improve my search engine ranking? Bob
No errors from the validator is good, but not essential by any means. I would guess that a majority of good working web pages would fail 'strict' validation in some way. Browsers are much more forgiving. (Just try one with unterminated lists, badly formed tables, etc. The browser makes a pretty good guess.) Validation and search engine rankings are orthogonal - they have no correlation at all. I'm guessing the search ending scrapers are just as tolerant of malformed HTML. Cheers, Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994.
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I wanted to validate my HTMl so I went to the site: http://validator.w3.org. The top line of my html is:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.or
g/TR/html4/loose.dtd">The message I am getting from the validator is:
Byte-Order Mark found in UTF-8 File.
The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.
As far as I can tell, I have no special characters in the file. I would like to fix this error but I have no idea how to do so. I am hoping somebody here can help. Thanks Bob
Did you type the message in using Dreamweaver, or did you write the content in another app and paste it in? I ask because if you used a word processor sometimes it's hard to tell a special character from a similar regular character. For example, double and single curly quotation marks can look just like straight quotations marks when pasted into another app, but they'll mess things up every time. Have you considered using the HTML 5 DOCTYPE? Might still give you the problem, but if you're making new pages why not make the break?