Just for laughs

**swani** · Nov 26, 2008 15:38

I have a site that I built for a client who has rudimentary html knowledge that he wants to use to make updates himself. I don't like this because it messes up my nice clean valid code. He just made his first updates today and the html is appalling. I went to check to see just how bad the code was and came across something that I found hilarious. This. Validates.

(Modified to protect the guilty and shortened for your convenience)

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<title></title>
<table>
        <tr>
          <th ALIGN=center colspan="4">Name of Event
        <tr>
          <th ALIGN=center colspan="4">Points Standings
        <tr>
          <td>Division
          <td>
          <td>
          <td>
        <tr>
          <td ALIGN=center>Pos.
          <td ALIGN=center>#
          <td>Name
          <td ALIGN=right>Points
        <tr>
          <td ALIGN=center>1.
          <td ALIGN=center>444
          <td>Name One
          <td ALIGN=right>156
        <tr>
          <td ALIGN=center>2.
          <td ALIGN=center>118
          <td>Name Two
          <td ALIGN=right>140
        <tr>
          <td ALIGN=center>3.
          <td ALIGN=center>352
          <td>Name Three
          <td ALIGN=right>140
        <tr>
          <td ALIGN=center>4.
          <td ALIGN=center>100
          <td>Name Four
          <td ALIGN=right>108
</table>

No <html> tags, no <head> tags, no <body> tags, not one <tr> closed, not one <td> closed, align attribute given without quotes. Isn't it wrong to have two <th> tags in one table? I know capitalizing the ALIGN is only wrong in xhtml but it just looks so wrong to me.

To all Americans here and abroad Happy Thanksgiving!

**Nick** · Nov 26, 2008 16:07

As for as I know you don't have to limit yourself to one <th> attribute per table, only one <thead>.

As for the rest...

**felgall** · Nov 26, 2008 18:17

All those missing tags are optional in the HTML spec and therefore leaving them out doesn't make the page invalid. The browser is required to work out where the missing tags go and insert them itself.

May make future maintenance much more difficult though.

**Ize** · Nov 27, 2008 10:36

I actually find it just as funny he knows how to use a doctype

**AutisticCuckoo** · Nov 27, 2008 13:27

As far as I can see it's perfectly valid HTML 4.01 Strict. The title shouldn't be empty and the ALIGN attributes ought to be replaced by CSS, but it's actually valid. Omitting tags is perfectly legitimate, although it's considered a bad practice these days since it makes the code harder to read for humans. Those attribute values don't need to be quoted, since they only consist of Latin letters.

Some people would actually consider that pretty efficient (or at least efficacious) markup (apart from the ALIGN attributes, of course).

I wouldn't write markup like that, but there's nothing technically wrong with it.

**zcorpan** · Nov 27, 2008 13:47

The table seems to misuse the TH and TD elements -- the THs seem to be heading content that ought to be outside the table, and things that should be THs are TDs. Something like the following:

Code:

<h1>Name of Event</h1>
<p>Points Standings</p>
<table>
 <caption>Division</caption>
 <tr>
  <th>Pos.
  <th>#
  <th>Name
  <th>Points
 <tr>
  <td>1.
  <td>444
  <td>Name One
  <td>156
 <tr>
  <td>2.
  <td>118
  <td>Name Two
  <td>140
 <tr>
  <td>3.
  <td>352
  <td>Name Three
  <td>140
 <tr>
  <td>4.
  <td>100
  <td>Name Four
  <td>108
</table>

**webcosmo** · Nov 27, 2008 14:22

lot of people think its easy to develop websites. they have no idea what it takes, until they mess up things.

**swani** · Dec 1, 2008 16:52

Originally Posted by Ize

I actually find it just as funny he knows how to use a doctype

The doctype is in there because I did that part of the page. The content is kept separate and is brought in by asp. I can guarantee you he has never heard of doctype.

**Stomme poes** · Dec 2, 2008 03:39

I had the same thing happen to me. I rewrote and CSS'd a page, and when I saw it online almost all the optional tags were gone (some p's where still closed), and the careful sizing I'd made of the boxes so that the page looked good in ALL resolutions/sizes was changed (so that it "fit his browser" whatever that meant) so now nothing lines up at all and everything looks like a child did it.
He'd had my username in his footer and I made him remove it! I don't want to be associated with that kind of coding unless I'd actually done it. It's 100% valid page though (and I learned about optional tags in the process, so all in all, maybe a good experience).

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