Common Validation Errors

The following errors were "harvested" from the W3C validation report on this page: http://library.csun.edu/ealtman/documentation/accessibility/badpage.html

Error Line 23 column 82: value of attribute "ALIGN" cannot be "DEFAULT"; must be one of "TOP", "MIDDLE", "BOTTOM", "LEFT", "RIGHT".

...dth="392" height="258" align="default">

Solution: This image problem only arises in pages created in Contribute.

• Dreamweaver fix: Either edit the code to remove the align attribute altogether, or change to a legal value, such as "TOP", "MIDDLE", "BOTTOM", "LEFT", or "RIGHT". You can do this quickly using the Image Properties Panel.
• Contribute fix: To change to a legal value, select the image and right-click it to open the Image Properties. Change the Alignment to "TOP", "MIDDLE", "LEFT", or "RIGHT".

Error Line 23 column 83: required attribute "ALT" not specified.

...th="392" height="258" align="default">

Solution: See "Before You Test--Image ALT Text"

Error Line 35 column 78: general entity "sort" not defined and no default entity.

...rtifact/BrowseArtifacts.po?catcode=138&sort=rating">Merlot

Solution: Contribute users, contact the library web master.

Dreamweaver users, you can fix this, but it takes a couple of steps.

1. First, note that nearly every error that involves an "entity" stems from the fact that the W3C validator needs ampersands to be represented as entities (the HTML code for non-ASCII characters). These ampersands will most likely make their way into your pages when you use a database search results URL as a link.
2. CLOSE your page in Dreamweaver, and open it in Notepad, or another plain-text editor (not Word).
3. Search for the URL that contains the unexpanded ampersand(s) and change each & that is not already part of an HTML entity to & (the semicolon is necessary). Don't do a global search and replace, or you risk creating monstrosities such as & and  .
4. Upload the file through Dreamweaver as usual. You won't need to fix the Dreamweaver preferences again, but every time the validator finds this problem, you will need to perform step #4 in a plain-text editor.

Other Errors

Other errors can appear in your page--

• if the page has broken away from the template (e.g. Error Line 1 column 0: no document type declaration). This can happen if you have edited template code manually, or export the page and edit it in another program.
• if you paste in formatted text from an unvalidated page. Contribute users may be able to remedy this by selecting the text, cutting it (Ctrl-x), then copying it back in as text only (Ctrl-Shift-v).
• if (Dreamweaver) you edit the code manually and leave out a quotation mark or a >.
• if (Dreamweaver) you paste in code and forget to paste in a required closing tag (see the W3C Index of Elements for which elements require closing tags).

If you encounter an error you cannot fix yourself, please seek assistance.