★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/HTML/Validation/validate.html

Is It Valid, or Is It Not?

This article explains why you may be getting an "invalid" report from the W3C Validator on pages from the WDVL recently.

What Happened?

We at the WDVL continually strive to produce pages that conform to the W3C's HTML 4 specification. Until recently, any page could be checked for validity by clicking on the W3C HTML4 button on each page, and the page would always check out perfectly, with no errors. Recently, however, intenet.com changed its banner ad software. The code which was inserted into our pages works well with the banner ad software, but unfortunately, it uses code which does not check out as valid.

The Problem and a Solution

The problem is simple: the ampersand symbol (&) can not be used on its own within HTML code and remain valid HTML. The solution is equally as simple: if we could substitute an ampersand followed by the letters "amp" and a semicolon

&amp;

the code would remain valid. Unfortunately, even if we replace the code on our pages, it is replaced again with the ampersand by the banner software. So for now, until the banner ad software is replaced by software that is HTML compliant, or we find another solution, we must suffer through the slings and arrows of having a few lines of code that does not validate correctly!