However, they don't have buttons or imply that they are validated

Boy. It failed all of us who posted in this thread

LOL, I don't want to fail! Teacher, I want to go to the head of the class and learn how to validate!!

Yes. That's exactly what I did with exactly the same results. It failed with 12 errors. Can't figure out why that is.

I think most sites just put a 'XHTML validated' picture on their website, because it looks 'good'.

For example: http://www.warpigw2.com/

OK, that's just plain WRONG! Not to mention misleading!

But you may be right, McDonald.

Just checked a bunch of themes on two of the XOOPS themes library. NONE of them are valid. Starting to wonder if the validator is valid.

lol, we haven't cleaned up the html of xoopsdesign default theme. I guess the following popular spanish saying applies to us: "en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo" ("In the blacksmith's house, a wooden knife.")

Validating can be tricky depending on the modules and blocks you have activated at your home page.

I usually validate having just the news module activated, when no errors show I start activating other modules to see if their templates need fixing. Sometimes the theme passes the test and the module templates are the ones that start messing up the validation.

The problem is that you are trying to validate a file that is not fully parsed. Given the information you've provided, I'm assuming that you're uploading the theme.html file directly to validate it. This will never work. reason being, the validator is ignorant of Smarty variables, which is where it bombs out.

Case in point, you mentioned that the validator fails at <{$xoops_charset}>, which is the first Smarty variable in a theme.

The only solution I know for this is to maintain a testing environment where themes can be fully parsed before the validator sees theme. A quick and dirty approach would be to keep a seperate install of XOOPS in a sub directory on your site, like so...

http://yoursite.com/testing/

There, you would test new designs. Since Smarty is a server side language, by placing your theme in a "live" environment, you ensure that the Smarty code is properly parsed, and therefore obtain an acurate evaluation of your theme's compliance.

On a side note...

IMHO, NO site should display buttons claiming XHTML/CSS compliance unless ALL pages validate. This is why I do not display such buttons on my XOOPS sites and I do not include these buttons in my themes. Because of the poor XHTML/CSS coding practices of many Devs, I know the site will fail on, at least, some pages by default.

Speaking from experience, it's a real PITA to make a XOOPS site fully standards compliant. It is my hope that, in the future, it will be mandatory that all modules be standards compliant.

Hope this clears things up.

Best Regards,

James

Quote:

I know what you mean. I can't think of one mechanic I know who has a car that works properly.