Validation error

Joe Blow · Aug 20, 2004

I have the following in my page:

</head>

<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<script type="text/javascript" language=Javascript>

</script>

It is used to detect older Netscape browsers and display the text.

It fails to validate at validator.w3.org - It says that the </b> and
</div> tags weren't open.

Any suggestions?

Mark Parnell · Aug 20, 2004

Any suggestions?

Remove it.

Toby Inkster · Aug 20, 2004

Joe said:
<script type="text/javascript" language=Javascript>

</script>

Javascript isn't allowed to contain "</". That magic string counts as "end
of the script data".

Use:
document.write("<"); document.write("/b><"); document.write("/div><br><br>");

Neal · Aug 20, 2004

I have the following in my page:

</head>

<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<script type="text/javascript" language=Javascript>

</script>

It is used to detect older Netscape browsers and display the text.

It fails to validate at validator.w3.org - It says that the </b> and
</div> tags weren't open.

Any suggestions?

I suggest you determine the real purpose and results of this code, and
decide ultimately that it's not worth including.

Jukka K. Korpela · Aug 20, 2004

Joe Blow said:
It is used to detect older Netscape browsers and display the text.

Worse than pointless.

It fails to validate at validator.w3.org - It says that the </b> and
</div> tags weren't open.

Because that's how things are by HTML syntax. See
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/problems.html#script

Jukka K. Korpela · Aug 20, 2004

Toby Inkster said:
Javascript isn't allowed to contain "</". That magic string counts as
"end of the script data".

No, the character pair "</" is allowed inside a script element.
It's "</b" that creates a syntax error. The script element's content
model is CDATA, which means that it may contain any string, treated as
unparsed string of characters as far as HTML is concerned, except that
the first occurrence of an end tag open delimiter (ETAGO, that is "</")
immediately followed by a name character (A - Z, a - z) is recognized and
terminates the string. And for a document to be valid, that construct
must be part of the end tag that terminates the element, </script>.

(That's HTML. In XHTML it's different, more confusing.)

And for this syntactic issue, it is completely irrelevant what the
content of the script element is (e.g., whether it is JavaScript code or
something else).

Use:
document.write("<"); document.write("/b><");
document.write("/div><br><br>");

Well, that would be one way of solving the problem, if the problem
mattered.

Karl Groves · Aug 20, 2004

It is used to detect older Netscape browsers and display the text.

The script is junk, and the purpose behind it is junk.
Unless you have individual log data that suggests otherwise, you're
expending far too much effort for <1% of your visitors.
People who make business decisions based on <1% of their customers are bad
businesspeople.

-Karl

Dylan Parry · Aug 20, 2004

Spake Joe Blow unto thee:

Any suggestions?

People using older versions of Netscape _expect_ to see junk when they
visit most sites. I wouldn't bother including that script at all, but if
you really insist replace it with:

<script type="text/javascript" language=Javascript>

</script>

Which is almost the same as your version, but with the </b> and </div>
escaped to become <\/b> and <\/div>.

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Validation error

Joe Blow

Mark Parnell

Toby Inkster

Neal

Jukka K. Korpela

Jukka K. Korpela

Karl Groves

Dylan Parry

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