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In response to my complaint against Boston University's Core Design, BU revised their HTML (for the Core Design webpages at least) so that the World Wide Web Consortium's Markup Validator reports no errors. They also sent me the following e-mail in response:
Jimmy,
Thank you for the feedback regarding the Core Design pages.
Our department directly maintains, or consults with other departments, on
the maintenance of many thousands of pages on the BU Web. We make every
effort to be fully valid and compliant, but with this very large number of
pages, errors will occasionally slip through. We also develop and launch
sites and then turn the maintenance of some of those sites over to the
individual departments, and sometimes the webmasters in these individual
departments are not always fully aware of validation compliance. It's a
never-ending battle.
I have made a few minor revisions to the site at
http://www.bu.edu/coredesign/ so it is now compliant. I appreciate you
bringing this my attention.
Best,
Ron
Ron Yeany
Senior Analyst/Consultant
Networked Information Services
Boston University
http://www.bu.edu/webcentral/help/
While making one set of pages standards complaint is a great step, BU seems to have absolutely no intention of following through on it. For example, their "Sites That Have Adopted The BU Core Design" webpage lists Boston University Home Page and Index as site that have adopted the BU Core Design. However, neither pages are valid HTML. The Boston University Home Page fails with 13 errors and the Index fails with 21 errors including a missing DOCTYPE declaration. Yet, BU still claims to be standards compliant. They didn't even bother to change the claim, which still reads as follows:
The Boston University Core Design adheres to standards published by World Wide Web Consortium and Core Design site templates are tested before launch. Both HTML (web) and CSS (style sheet) files are validated for compliance.
As an excuse, their e-mail states that there are too many webpages managed by too many people. However, if they cannot make the website standards compliant, they should not say that the website is standards compliant. They also seem to have completely ignored my comment stating that Also, tables should not be used for layout ("http://www.w3.org/2002/03/csslayout-howto").
.
At the moment, they flout the standards; their limited response presents itself as an effort to brush the complaint aside. Perhaps they will eventually fix everything when enough people complain (but I don't think this will happen soon). I can continue to point out problems on the website, but they can just as easily ignore my messages. Some things just never change.
While browsing BU's website, I discovered BU's Core [Website] Deign's claim to be Standards Compliant. The claim reads as follows:
The Boston University Core Design adheres to standards published by World Wide Web Consortium and Core Design site templates are tested before launch. Both HTML (web) and CSS (style sheet) files are validated for compliance.
While I was impressed that BU actually bothered to make compliant websites, I was also quite skeptical about the claim since the disclaimer they add to the bottom of my webpages caused my webpages to get validation errors (before I tweaked the disclaimer's HTML). So, I decided to test their HTML using the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML Validator. The results are dreadful; the page failed the validation with 19 errors.
These 19 errors aren't just typos either. They include a missing DOCTYPE declaration, which prevents anything from figuring out with what standards this webpage supposedly complies. For those who don't realize the magnitude of this error, it is a great enough error to warrant huge, bold, and white letters spelling out "This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)!" on a red background.
Although this error alone makes the page non-standards compliant, the validator decided to continue validating the page with the leinent HTML 4.01 Transitional standard. However, even with this lenient standard, the page managed to rack up 18 additional errors ranging including made up attributes, missing required attributes, misplaced elements, and missing end-tags. I am certain that if a DOCTYPE declaration was present in the webpage, more errors would be detected.
In addition, even if the validation errors were not there, the page still wouldn't be standards compliant. They used tables for laying-out their webpage, which should not be done.
So feeling a bit insulted (since I actually made my pages using valid HTML while BU lies about doing so), I e-mailed them to politely point out the problem. The message I sent them follows:
Have you checked your HTML lately? "http://www.bu.edu/coredesign/overview/standards.html" claims that "The Boston University Core Design adheres to standards published by World Wide Web Consortium and Core Design site templates are tested before launch. Both HTML (web) and CSS (style sheet) files are validated for compliance."
However, a quick check shows that it absolutely does not! A quick check with the w3.org validator shows that even the page claiming to be compliant is not ("http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fcoredesign%2Foverview%2Fstandards.html").
Also, tables should not be used for layout ("http://www.w3.org/2002/03/csslayout-howto").
If you'd like help on making it HTML compliant, I am willing to help.
-Jimmy C. Chau
jchau@bu.edu
Hopefully, they'll respond by making their pages as standards compliant as they claim the pages are. Eventually, they may even fix the HTML for the disclaimer at the bottom of my webpages.
I got a cell phone this week. Contact me for more information.
While the website will always be occasionally updated and improved this is not a guarantee may change at any time, it approaches completion. Most of the webpages are complete. No dead links or half-baked pages should be expected anymore; if you notice any of these, please report them.
Recent improvements to the website includes the following:
Jimmy overhauls his website at http://people.bu.edu/jchau/. Dead links and half-baked pages are to be expected.