HTML Forum

**jrosworld.com** · 06-29-2009, 07:22 PM

I have some drop-down menus on my website. More or less, I copied the code that I used straight from the 'W3 schools' website, so I thought it would be good code. Turns out it's not. When I tried to validate my pages, I got a load of errors. I've fixed most of these, but using the page http://www.jrosworld.com/blog.html, I still get 9 errors. I've read the explanations but I still can't figure out how to make this valid XHTML 1.1.

All the errors occur within the following code:

Code:

<form action="uri">
    <select id="gowhere" onchange="go()">
    <option value="blog.html" />- Select blog entry -

    <option value="blog.html" />June
    <option value="blog/canada/get_that_***.html" />   23rd: Get that ***
    <option value="blog/canada/due_south.html" />   18th: Due South
    <option value="blog/canada/fatties_and_uglies.html" />   14th: Fatties and uglies
    <option value="blog/canada/on_this_day_1_year_ago_anthology.html" />   12th: On this day, 1 year ago anthology
    <option value="blog/canada/jros_world_take_2.html" />   9th: Jro's World: Take 2
    </select>

    </form>

If anyone could tell me how to make this code valid for XHTML 1.1 I'd be greatful.

**LadynRed** · 06-29-2009, 07:45 PM

You shouldn't be using XHTML 1.1 anyway, it's not supported by IE at all and barely supported in all other browsers. Drop it back to 1.0 Strict and you'll be fine.

You also need to lose the XML declaration, that will throw IE (except 8) into Quirks Mode with some ugly results.

**GeekSpecialties** · 06-30-2009, 01:42 AM

Yes I agree drop it down to 1.0. But if you want to figure it out, put your option inside an opening and closing option tag like this:

Code:

<option value="1">Aries</option>

http://xhtml.com/en/xhtml/reference/select/

**LadynRed** · 06-30-2009, 09:29 AM

Agreed. The <option> has a matching closing tag, so what you have with the closing slash and not the proper </option> is incorrect.

**jrosworld.com** · 07-02-2009, 06:11 PM

Awesome. That's fixed all but 2 of the errors.

It still doesn't like:

Code:

<select id="gowhere" onchange="go()">

and I can't see what's wrong with this closing tag:

Code:

</form>

If you can see what's wrong with them that'd be great.

As for switching back to XHTML 1.0, I'm not too sure what you mean by that. I just taught myself HTML, and was never too concerned with "versions" or anything. Would that impact the

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

? Because I've never had any clue what any of that meant. I just put it in the top of all my pages because I knew it had to be there.

Thanks for the help!

**LadynRed** · 10:32 AM

Then it's time you learned

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/

Quote:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Having the xml declaration in there will throw IE versions (except 8) into Quirks Mode - and you definitely do NOT want that, the results will be ugly.

Quote:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

The XHTML 1.1 DTD is NOT fully supported by any browser at this time, and it will cause problems, so use XHTML 1.0 Strict instead, which IS fully supported.

Quote:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Many will argue that unless you're going to actually render your code AS XML, then using the XHTML doctype rendered as text is 'wrong'. Since XML didn't evolve as it was thought it would, I think it's rather a moot point.

Quote:

The validator doesn't like javascript inside a tag, it will ALWAYS choke on that. The validator will also trip errors or warnings on things downstream in your code based on an error it finds above it. So the </form> erorr may be due to what it doesn't like on that <select> tag.

**jrosworld.com** · 07-04-2009, 12:07 PM

Haha I just noticed your signature quote about IE. So true.

I've read that article that you linked to, and I can see why it would make sense to change the doctype of my webpages. But I have about 3,500 pages on my website. And with the exception of Opera, it displays as I intended in every version of every browser that I've tested it with. So would it be worth the weeks of time that it would take me to change the doctype of every page, even though it displays ok now? Will XHTML 1.1 not be fully supported at sometime in the near future? Or is that me being naive?

Quote:

The validator doesn't like javascript inside a tag, it will ALWAYS choke on that. The validator will also trip errors or warnings on things downstream in your code based on an error it finds above it. So the </form> erorr may be due to what it doesn't like on that <select> tag.

I'm not especially JS savvy. What would be the correct way to display this? Something like:

Code:

<select id="gowhere">
<script type="text/javascript">onchange="go()"</script>

???

Thanks.

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