Validating <textarea>

[Dennis Allen]

Hi. I hope someone here can help. I'm webmaster for a local astronomy
club. Just went over our web site. Have validated every htm file on the
site except:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.stargazing.net/mas/COMET.htm

In the <textarea> of this page I have Javascript code. I can't figure out
how to present this code and still be w3c valid. Any advice would be
appreciated...D ennis

[Christopher Finke]

Re: Validating &lt;textarea&gt ;

"Dennis Allen" <dennis@dennisa llen.com> wrote in message
news:100k5jf9kf 33g27@corp.supe rnews.com...[color=blue]
> Hi. I hope someone here can help. I'm webmaster for a local astronomy
> club. Just went over our web site. Have validated every htm file on the
> site except:
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht.../mas/COMET.htm
>
> In the <textarea> of this page I have Javascript code. I can't figure out
> how to present this code and still be w3c valid. Any advice would be
> appreciated...D ennis[/color]

Do a search and replace on the code inside the textarea, and change all
opening angle brackets ("<") to "&lt;" and all closing angle brackets (">")
to "&gt;". The code will validate, and the text inside the textarea will
appear the same.

Christopher Finke

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: Validating &lt;textarea&gt ;

"Dennis Allen" <dennis@dennisa llen.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Have validated every htm file on the
> site except:
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...g.net/mas/COME
> T.htm[/color]

That's not an "htm file" but a reference to a validator so that the URL
of a page is passed to it. Actually, not even that, since
"Within a query component, the characters ;, /, ?, :, @, &, =, +, ,,
and $ are reserved." (RFC 2396), so the reference is syntactically
malformed.
[color=blue]
> In the <textarea> of this page I have Javascript code. I can't
> figure out how to present this code and still be w3c valid.[/color]

Why do you use a form input field when you don't want any user input?

Just put the Javascript code into a separate file and link to it, on a
page that explains what the code does, if you think the code is useful.
If the user's browser starts actually executing Javascript code when he
follows the link, then this will be a useful lesson, and a cheap one as
compared with the possibility of following an innocent-looking link
using a Javascript-enabled browser.

If you insist on embedding Javascript code as visible text onto your
HTML document, then make it really visible, inside <pre> element for
example, instead of forcing the user play with a separately scrollable
area inside a scrollable window.

In any case, any "<" and "&" as data characters in HTML should be
written as "&lt;" and "&amp;". (Using "&gt;" for ">" is never required
by HTML rules, but you might do it for symmetry, or to cope with some
assumed bugs in ancient browsers.) A rhetorical question: are you
qualified to make recommendations to other people about what they
should put into their HTML documents, if you were not able to figure
out this elementary HTML thing on your own?

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Dennis Allen]

Re: Validating &lt;textarea&gt ;

Just want I needed to know. Thanks...Dennis

"Christophe r Finke" <christopherfin ke@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bud71v$gi1 mu$1@ID-158177.news.uni-berlin.de...[color=blue]
> "Dennis Allen" <dennis@dennisa llen.com> wrote in message
> news:100k5jf9kf 33g27@corp.supe rnews.com...[color=green]
> > Hi. I hope someone here can help. I'm webmaster for a local astronomy
> > club. Just went over our web site. Have validated every htm file on[/color][/color]
the[color=blue][color=green]
> > site except:
> >[/color][/color]
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht.../mas/COMET.htm[color=blue][color=green]
> >
> > In the <textarea> of this page I have Javascript code. I can't figure[/color][/color]
out[color=blue][color=green]
> > how to present this code and still be w3c valid. Any advice would be
> > appreciated...D ennis[/color]
>
> Do a search and replace on the code inside the textarea, and change all
> opening angle brackets ("<") to "&lt;" and all closing angle brackets[/color]
(">")[color=blue]
> to "&gt;". The code will validate, and the text inside the textarea will
> appear the same.
>
> Christopher Finke
>
>[/color]

[Dennis Allen]

Re: Validating &lt;textarea&gt ;

That's what I need to know. Thanks...Dennis

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote in message
news:Xns9474652 C6FF79jkorpelac stutfi@193.229. 0.31...[color=blue]
> In any case, any "<" and "&" as data characters in HTML should be
> written as "&lt;" and "&amp;". (Using "&gt;" for ">" is never required
> by HTML rules, but you might do it for symmetry, or to cope with some
> assumed bugs in ancient browsers.) A rhetorical question: are you
> qualified to make recommendations to other people about what they
> should put into their HTML documents, if you were not able to figure
> out this elementary HTML thing on your own?
>
> --
> Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
> Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html
>[/color]