Validating MySpace



  • Some of you may already know this, but I can't risk not sharing it: 

    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.myspace.com&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

     For fun, try overriding the DOCTYPE (since it doesn't supply one)



  • Myspace is a hopeless pile of cruft, even before you actually open anyone's space with its broken HTML 3.2-based themes and pile of clashing colors and embedded media.  Initial validation by guess says 148 errors.  I changed it to HTML 4.01 transitional, and that netted 156 errors.  I noticed that the <img> tags were closed, so I tried XHTML 1.0 Transitional and got 756 errors.



  • OMG a page on teh intarwebs that doesn't validate!  Stop the presses!

    OMG it doesn't parse as MathML 2.0!  What whill I do?

    Enjoy your mug.



  •  W3C Validition is a joke.

     There, I said it.

    The only sites that actually validate by it are the ones done by hand by smug W3C zealots. The end client doesn't care, as long as it does render correctly in the major browers. Once you start using a development framework, its almost impossible to create a valid site.

    Just for fun:

    Google

    Yahoo

    The biggest WTF, is that MSN.COM is valid.

    MSN



  • @belgariontheking said:

    OMG a page on teh intarwebs that doesn't validate!  Stop the presses!

    OMG it doesn't parse as MathML 2.0!  What whill I do?

    Enjoy your mug.

     

     

    Stop trying to desperately immitate that kook MasterAsshat.   



  •  @Jonathan Holland said:

    The only sites that actually validate by it are the ones done by hand by smug W3C zealots.

    Actually I just checked a couple of my recent sites, and they all validate fine (save for three little errors on one regarding &nbsp). 

    I definitely don't care about the W3C standards, and I have never given it a second though before. I just figured, what the hell, let's see how awful I will bomb...

    And they are all based on ASP.NET (running on Mono, might I add).



  •  Look at the actual error messages. Some of them are pointless, but others show misuse of elements. Keep that in mind when comparing MySpace's validation versus other websites.



  • @Amro said:

     Look at the actual error messages. Some of them are pointless, but others show misuse of elements. Keep that in mind when comparing MySpace's validation versus other websites.

     

    Is this the first time you have heard of a W3C validator, or the first time you have seen MySpace?

    I didn't need a validator to know MySpace is a steaming pile of shit...



  • You must be new to this whole HTML thing. 



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    The only sites that actually validate by it are the ones done by hand by smug W3C zealots

    It does matter if you want to make your site available to cell phones.  They're so low-powered that they simply don't know how to deal with improperly formatted html.  But that (right now) is such a niche market.  

    Most sites are simply too complex to visit on a cell phone, so their developers and overlords don't care.  By the time mobile internet gets to be widespread, phones will have complex browsers and won't need perfect html.  Some blackberries and the iPhone can deal with imperfect html today.

    But the quote above still rings true.  I make sure my sites validate, and I would consider myself a zealot.   


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Lysis said:

    Stop trying to desperately immitate that kook MasterAsshat.   

    I could mention CPound and Swampy here, but you're failing to imitate both of them.

    You're a troll. And a bad one at that.

     

    You need a speel chicken.

     



  • @PJH said:

    @Lysis said:

    Stop trying to desperately immitate that kook MasterAsshat.   

    I could mention CPound and Swampy here, but you're failing to imitate both of them.

    You're a troll. And a bad one at that.

     

    You need a speel chicken.

     

     

     

    My glorious flame bait:   2

    You and baller's ability to not feed the troll:  -2 

     




  • @belgariontheking said:

    OMG a page on teh intarwebs that doesn't validate!  Stop the presses!

    OMG it doesn't parse as MathML 2.0!  What whill I do?

     

    Since they didn't even bother to set a doctype, which is always required since HTML 3.0, I was pointing out that it wouldn't validate even when a few likely doctypes were "spotted" for Myspace. 



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    The biggest WTF, is that MSN.COM is valid.

    MSN

    Now, if you consider a [i]properly written[/i] webpage a WTF,.. I don't really know what to say.



  •  @Spectre said:

    @Jonathan Holland said:

    The biggest WTF, is that MSN.COM is valid.

    MSN

    Now, if you consider a properly written webpage a WTF,.. I don't really know what to say.

     

    He's saying that it's funny a Microsoft website validates because they generally follow the standards poorly. I think.



  • The homepage isn't as bad as an average profile... http://www.myspace.com/tom has 533 errors with the default settings in the validator, and 1578 using XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Even validating my page (http://www.myspace.com/daniel_1515) has 326 errors (and it's just a "This profile is set to private. This user must add you as a friend to see his/her profile." page, unless you have me as a friend). My profile itself has 794 errors.

    Just for fun, go to a page and look at the HTML. Apart from validation, there's some very stupid things. For example, the default stylesheet doesn't have underlines on links. To add underlines to the bottom links, the links have <u> tags in them. Also, some things that should really be done server-side, showing different links for logged in users:

    <SCRIPT>	
    function ChangeLinkTextAndUrl (linkId, linkText, linkUrl, debugAlerts)
    {
    	var targetLink=document.getElementById(linkId);
    	if (targetLink != "undefined" && targetLink != null )
    	{
    		targetLink.href=linkUrl;
    		targetLink.innerHTML=linkText;
    	}
    	if (debugAlerts == true) alert(linkId + " URL: " + linkId + "\n" + linkId + " Link: " + targetLink.href+ "\n" + linkId + " Text: " + targetLink.innerHTML);
    }
    

    if (MySpace.ClientContext.IsLoggedIn==true)
    {
    //set SignUpOrOut link to SignOut if users is logged in
    ChangeLinkTextAndUrl("aSignUpOrOut", "SignOut", "http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=signout", false);
    }
    else
    {
    //change blog link to go to main blog page if user is not logged in
    ChangeLinkTextAndUrl("headerbloglink", "Blogs", "http://blog.myspace.com/", false);
    }
    </SCRIPT>


    And, uh, what's the point of this?
    <script type="text/javascript">
    window.setTimeout(changeTitle, 20);
    function changeTitle()
    {
    document.title = "MySpace.com - Daaaaaaniel (:™ - 17 - Male - Melbourne, Victoria - www.myspace.com/daniel_1515";
    }
    </script>
    

    And, the same information, not once, not twice, but three times in the JavaScript:

    MySpace.ClientContext = {"UserId":173242021,"DisplayFriendId":173242021,"IsLoggedIn":true};
    ...
    var MySpaceClientContext = {"UserId":173242021,"DisplayFriendId":173242021,"IsLoggedIn":true};
    ...
    function getDisplayFriendID() { return 173242021; }
    

    Meh... Their HTML and JavaScript is really fun to laugh at :P



  • Of course, the king of crud HTML in terms of large scale websites is, and always has been, Amazon. Current frontpage - 1618 errors.

    Clicky Linky. Do not stare directly at view source with remaining eye.

    This is a fair example of the kind of wonders you'll find in the 778 <script> blocks or 1,567,456 css blocks

    <a name="R2G9YFK7PW6LNB"></a>

     



  • @Spectre said:

    @Jonathan Holland said:

    The biggest WTF, is that MSN.COM is valid.

    MSN

    Now, if you consider a properly written webpage a WTF,.. I don't really know what to say.

     

     Actually, it's still not right.  They're serving the document with a content-type of text/html since their own browser doesn't recognize application/xhtml+xml.  Browsers like Firefox that support XHTML just fall back to HTML parsing when given the text/html content-type.  The Real WTF is XHTML zealots, they usually never realize their pages are just being handled as HTML.  I suppose you could generate HTML for IE and XHTML for the other browsers, but I just do HTML 4.01 strict.



  • Making fun of MySpace for spewing out bad HTML is like making fun of a fat baby for farting. You might feel good about it for a while, but it's also something tha'ts rather expected and unsurprising.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    The Real WTF is XHTML zealots, they usually never realize their pages are just being handled as HTML.
    Most of them also usually don't realise that that there's can be a significant rendering difference between the page being handled as XHTML or tagsoup.



  • @Lars Vargas said:

    Making fun of MySpace for spewing out bad HTML is like making fun of a fat baby for farting. You might feel good about it for a while, but it's also something tha'ts rather expected and unsurprising.

    Yeah.  I'm surprised we're still talking about myspace not being compliant like it's a WTF. 


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