How to validate HTML 4.01 Transitional!

[malcolm]

Please help with validation of this free website
www.bankchargesrefunded.co.uk


Bankchargesrefunded/asp has a validation error relating to the borders to
which I am unable to resolve.
I have used http://validator.w3.org to try and validate this page but fail
every time.

# Error Line 71 column 21: value of attribute "NAME" must be a single token.
<meta name="Microsoft Border" content="tb">
This attribute can not take a space-separated list of words as a value, but
only one word ("token"). This may also be caused by the use of a space for
the value of an attribute which does not permit it.

The problem needs experienced frontpage users / MVP to assist .

Please advise what other info you may need to be able to help with this
issue.

Regards
Malcolm Whyte
Site Administrator

 

[Nicholas Savalas - http://savalas.tv]

Dear Malcolm,

Good for you. Webmasters should be very concerned with HTML validation,
privacy policy transparency, and accessibility. when a web page
designer asks questions regarding these fields, I know that their heart
is in the right place, and they get my immediate attention.

FrontPage's shared borders, themes, navigation, and other proprietary
feaures generally work OK for people who just want a way for navigation
and style types to be identical and cover their entire site. You add a
page to your web, include it in the navigation view, and bang, it shows
up on all the navigation bars, uses your site's theme, and has its own
individually named banner. How groovy is that? The problem is, none of
the code used in those proprietary solutions has any relationship to
the standard markup authorized by the governing bodies who declare
coding procedures and institute valid tags for HTML. when you use one
of the easy solutions offered by FrontPage to handle site navigation
and theme, the tradeoff is that you are no longer using accepted markup
tags. Some browsers, like Opera and Firefox, render these proprietary
solutions completely differently as well.

While it is terrific that you are trying to make a page that validates
in HTML 4.01, remember that in a few years HTML 4.01 will be a
dinosaur, and everybody will be validating in XHTML 1.0 and above, are
you may want to think ahead when designing your web page.

I have tried to change the value of that Microsoft border attribute for
clients using their hex value of the words "Microsoft Border", e.g.

mailto:%4D%69%63%72%6F%73%6F%66%74%20%42%6F%72%64%65%72

and the dec value of the words "Microsoft Border", e.g.:

mailto:Microsoft Border

but that doesn't work because Microsoft FrontPage just changes it back.
Even if you force those values in by doing the editing in notepad, your
navigation will not work because FrontPage does not understand the hex
or dec value of those entries as they pertain to the Microsoft Border
attribute. To make a long story short, you CANNOT use the proprietary
border, theme, or navigation solutions offered by Microsoft FrontPage
if you intend to have a page that validates in HTML 4.01 and above.

My advice to you is to come up with a new navigation system, one that
validates not only in HTML 4.01 transitional, but XHTML 1.0 and beyond.
One such place that offers solutions to these problems is List-A-Matic
- the URL is:

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm

They have hundreds of solutions there and each one is easily
customizable to match your theme or design. Good luck Malcolm, keep me
posted on how things are going.

Nicholas Savalas - http://savalas.tv