HTML Validation

[metal450]

After doing a bit of research and deciding that oscmax seems to be the most well-liked opensource ecommerce solution, I installed it without a hitch. However, I was surprised to find that right out-of-the-box there are LOADS of html validation errors, even with the default template. The same is true for Cobalt and Flame, the only other 2 free templates I could find. Could I've done something wrong in my setup? I find it hard to believe that so many people would be running non-validating ecommerce sites??

Tips would be greatly appreciated

[pgmarshall]

This is being addressed in v2.5 - beta released today.

Most pages are W3C compliant both front and back office. Although there are still some small issues which need fixes.

If you are into validation then download the latest beta - posted recently - and take a look.

Regards,

[ridexbuilder]

..the only other 2 free templates I could find.

Need to look a bit harder.

[metal450]

So then I'm correct in assuming that nearly everyone currently running oscmax is doing so with non-validating sites? Only the newest beta is valid

[pgmarshall]

metal450,

Almost no sites will validate these days! Although we are pretty much there - as an example try browsing a few well known websites:

Amazon: 916 errors on their home page
Ebay: 193 errors
Google 118 errors (even on their basic search page)

W3C errors do not cause any major issues to the functionality and most people would not even know what you are talking about but I do agree that it would be nice to get a fully validated store - it is just we have been working on getting the functionality up and running.

Now we have a major beta release out in the wild - when testing and bug reports are put in I will be looking at the validation side of things at the same time. The admin side is basically done but the catalog side has mainly be left to the end user to straighten out.

Regards,

[metal450]

metal450,

Almost no sites will validate these days!

I know, but I don't take that as an excuse to be lazy with mine

Besides, as a programmer who makes his living off of writing quality code, it doesn't exactly reflect well on my skills if I present my products on a site that doesn't even follow the basic validation rules :P Tech clients do check.

the catalog side has mainly be left to the end user to straighten out.

In my mind the catalog is by far the most important, as that's what the public sees. Of course, customized themes etc are totally the user's responsibility - but without a valid starting point, it's even harder to work things out. Wordpress, for example, will always validate on the default theme. OpenCart too.

Also, there are different levels of violations: including an unsupported attribute is no big deal, but loads of mismatched tags make it very very difficult to customize the theme's elements. Inspecting the "interpreted" structure with things like Firebug don't reflect the real code structure, since many tags are unclosed, in invalid locations, etc.

Anyway, just a recommendation

[pgmarshall]

I agree and you will see osCmax become fully compliant (hopefully before the full release of v2.5). It is not laziness merely a very active development cycle - 400+ commits in 6 months ... (have a look at the developers link in the header)

I have a few wordpress blogs which I help out on - but I must say that whilst some (not all) are compliant at launch as soon as any widgets go in the errors start racking up quite quickly.

The fallback template for v2.5 is pretty much a complete rewrite - most pages are fundamentally W3C compliant - most failures are forms created at the wrong point and the old favourite of php variables not declared properly - simple fixes.

OpenCart does validate on the index page - but browse a bit deeper and it fails as well (sitemap: 15 errors, login: 17 errors, product_info: 10 errors) - generally most of the problems are associated with what the end user enters - lack of image heights, using & signed in their content, etc. which we will hopefully address asap.

You should find very few tag issues - 90% of issues are php variables, forms created in wrong place and the odd table badly closed. Nothing too serious that should cause any problems for a decent designer.

It sounds like you know what you are doing so if you are interested in osCmax - I would suggest downloading it from the SVN and having a look through what we are up to ... there has been quite a bit done recently including quite a bit on W3C compliance and E_NOTICE errors.

We always welcome constructive comments - thanks,

Regards,

[spoofy]

Is 2.1 basically being renamed to v 2.5 ?

[pgmarshall]

Yep - Due to the number of changes, upgrades and feature installs we are moving the release number to reflect this.

Regards,

[michael_s]

Is 2.1 basically being renamed to v 2.5 ?

If you were on the release announcements mailing list you wouldn't have to ask! It was explained in the 2.5 beta release announcement mailing.