It was to be simple data collection. I wrote “I guess we’ll have to wait and see what after effects May Day brings.” at the end of XHTML’s Gift regarding those sites which chose HTML 4.01. That’s simple. HTML 4.01 sites from beyond those prominent, well-thumbed bookmarked sites I visit. CSS Reboot Spring 2006 would be perfect. And, since I was collecting data for HTML 4.01, I included Document Type Definition (DTD) or, DOCTYPE and Character Set Encoding since I've written about them before. [See Why XHTML™? and Which Character Set Encoding should be Used?, respectively.] I began data collection after CSS Reboot Spring 2006 ended, May 2nd. The first site which did not declare a character set underwent review utilizing The W3C Quality Assurance Markup Validation Service tool. An odd occurrence occurred. The site failed markup validation. Curiosity set. I went back through all of the previous sites: most failed markup. The scope of this project was—Then—increased: HTML 4.01, DTD, Charset and W3C Validation results.
CSS Reboot had seven hundred eight-six (786) sites which participated according to their number of pages, i.e., 15, and sites per page, i.e., 54. CSS Reboot states that 744 sites—Officially—rebooted; I could not verify that. Therefore, data collection was made on all of the sites presented in CSS Reboot. However, the final number was adjusted for two reasons: tables-based sites (27) and sites which were not sites (21), e.g., “Site removed pending relaunch.” or “Server not found.” The final count—by my count—was seven hundred thirty-eight (738) sites. Data collection and analysis were performed between May 2 — June 6, 2006.
A Proposed W3C Validation Icon was composed after preliminary data collection of the websites which participated in Spring CSS Reboot 2006 because of the failure rate exhibited by those sites.
71.8% of the websites failed validation for HTML Markup! for CSS or, for both!
28.2% were valid!
That’s atrocious.
The predominate Document Types declared and failure rates are illustrated, as follows.
The Final Breakdown goes like this. [Note: All DOCTYPEs have been given as they were written in the source code of the sites.]
- DOCTYPE [None declared]
- 8 Sites (for which no server-side DTD was identified by Validation.)
- All sites failed validation.
-
- 3 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 5 failed Markup/CSS
- HTML 4.01/None
- 2 Sites (which were server-side Strict)
- All Sites failed validation.
-
- All failed Markup/CSS
- HTML 4.01/Transitional
- 19 Sites
- 84.2% of the websites failed validation. 15.8% were valid.
-
- 3 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 9 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 7 failed Markup/CSS
- HTML 4.01/Strict
- 27 Sites
- 74.1% of the websites failed validation. 25.9% were valid.
-
- 7 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 4 passed Markup but failed CSS
- 8 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 8 failed Markup/CSS
- XHTML 1.0/Frameset
- 1 Site [Note: All pages in frames were Standards-based.]
- It passed validation.
-
- It is Valid Markup/CSS
- XHTML 1.0/Transitional
- 367 Sites
- 74.9% of the websites failed validation. 25.1% were valid.
-
- 92 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 68 passed Markup but failed CSS
- 89 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 118 failed Markup/CSS
- XHTML 1.0/Strict
- 220 Sites
- 70.5% of the websites failed validation. 29.5% were valid.
-
- 65 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 49 passed Markup but failed CSS
- 53 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 53 failed Markup/CSS
- XHTML 1.0/Strict content=“text/hmtl+xml; charset=iso-8859-1”
- 1 Site
- It failed validation.
-
- It failed Markup but passed CSS
- XHTML 1.1 [No Content type declared]
- 1 Site
- It passed validation.
-
- It was Valid Markup/CSS
- XHTML 1.1 content-type=“text/hmtl”
- 59 Sites
- 64.4% of the websites failed validation. 35.6% were valid.
-
- 21 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 14 passed Markup but failed CSS
- 5 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 19 failed Markup/CSS
- XHTML 1.1 content=“application/xhtml+xml;charset=utf-8”
- 8 Sites
- 50% of the websites failed validation; 50% were valid.
-
- 4 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 3 passed Markup but failed CSS
- 1 failed Markup/CSS
- XML 1.0/XHTML1.0/Transitional [No Content type declared]
- 2 Sites
- 50% of the websites failed validation; 50% were valid.
-
- 1 was Valid Markup/CSS
- 1 passed Markup but failed CSS
- XML 1.0/XHTML 1.0/Transitional content-type=“text/hmtl”
- 5 Sites
- 40% of the websites failed validation; 60% were valid
-
- 3 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 1 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 1 failed Markup/CSS
- XML 1.0/XHTML 1.0/Strict content-type=“text/hmtl”
- 10 Sites
- 40% of the websites failed validation; 60% were valid.
-
- 6 were Valid Markup/CSS
- 3 passed Markup but failed CSS
- 1 failed Markup but passed CSS
- XML 1.0/XHTML 1.0/Strict content=“application/xhtml+xml; charset=utf-8”
- 1 Site
- It passed validation.
-
- It was Valid Markup/CSS
- XML 1.0/XHTML 1.1 [No Content type declared]
- 2 Sites
- 100% of the websites failed validation.
-
- 1 failed Markup but passed CSS
- 1 failed Markup/CSS
- XML 1.0/XHTML XHTML1.1 content-type=“text/hmtl”
- 3 Sites
- 67% of the websites failed validation; 33% were valid.
-
- 1 was Valid Markup/CSS
- 1 passed Markup but failed CSS
- 1 failed Markup/CSS
It appears that those sonorous messages from Big-Top Barkers, Standardistas, Web Standards Evangelists, Semantics Peddlers and Old Professionals are wee and small beyond the vernal arcades of the Standards Side Show. Still, it’s not all that dismal. Some sites failed for typographical errors. Some for The W3C CSS Validation Service not comprehending CSS3 Selectors. Some were failures caused by CSS Hacks. A few 9 Rules Sites failed.
Still.
[The Most Common HTML Markup Errors is the next article in this series.]
[Published date: 17 June 2006]