http://validator.w3.org/

And watch in utter horror while your site is rejected as a bad example to kids everywhere.

So what is going on here? And is there anyway out?

Well after some digging I found an excellent article:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/netfxbcl/thread/ac098c63-61ff-4b53-b5ad-72cb2eb0f7f2

It turns out the validator is unrecognised as a browser type to asp.net and so is presented with html 4.0 instead of xhtml, hence the border=”0″ debarkle.

Is there a workaround? Yes there is either don’t use image buttons or put this in your web.config:

<browserCaps>
<case match=“W3C_Validator*“>
TagWriter = System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter
W3CDomVersion = 1.0
</case>
</browserCaps>

A solution to a weird problem, but necessary if like me you want that green tick

1. most read, most email varies depending on what page you’re on! How is that possible?

2.Video/Audio/text content is only available in 1 form, you need to support at least text, but many stories are video only. Why? At least have a subtitles option.

3. “Scientists say” stories! Tea is good for you, tea is bad for you… etc. etc. no evidence, rarely do they even bother to name the scientists involved, this is dumbed down nonsense. STOP IT! This is true of the TV news as well as the site.

4. Sources should be clearly quoted at the end of each story; so that we can check these sources and find out more.

5. They boast accessibility but the “new” website still uses tables for formatting!!! Making the site very hard to navigate for the visually impaired. this is a basic stuff come on BBC if you need some help with this please just ask! Other BBC sites are very accessible so just no excuse really.

6. The news ticker on the front page should have a back/forward button, it’s so frustrating when you get a glimpse of a interesting story then have to wait for it to come around again.

7. Very biased reporting on Bill Gates recently, seemed to be just free publicity for Microsoft

The good news is the bbc news site could really be a world class site if it could address these problems. Generally news is the BBC’s flagship product, they must not fall into the trap of dumbing down news to retain more viewers.

Cheers
Dave