W3C Validation of FORM

steamydave · April 27th, 2005, 03:29 AM

Hi, I'm having trouble with the W3C validation of the search for I have been trying to include in my page. Test page was created as per the XHTML and CSS Web Sites.

Below is a cut-down version of a simple page/site which still doesn't go through the validation! I can't see why!

************************************************** **********
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>Test WebSite</title>
<style type="text/css">

</style>

</head>

<body>
<div id="mainbody">
    <form action="search.asp" method="post">
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search">
    </form>
</div>
</body>
</html>
************************************************** ***********
The validation results are as follows...

------------------------------------------------------------------
Line 20, column 50: document type does not allow element "INPUT" here; missing one of "P", "H1", "H2", "H3", "H4", "H5", "H6", "PRE", "DIV", "ADDRESS" start-tag

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search">

The mentioned element is not allowed to appear in the context in which you've placed it; the other mentioned elements are the only ones that are both allowed there and can contain the element mentioned. This might mean that you need a containing element, or possibly that you've forgotten to close a previous element.

One possible cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a block-level element (such as "<p>" or "<table>") inside an inline element (such as "<a>", "<span>", or "").

#9993;

Line 21, column 7: end tag for "FORM" which is not finished

</form>

Most likely, You nested tags and closed them in the wrong order. For example <p><em>...</p> is not acceptable, as <em> must be closed before <p>. Acceptable nesting is: <p><em>...</em></p>

Another possibility is that you used an element (e.g. 'ul') which requires a child element (e.g. 'li') that you did not include. Hence the parent element is "not finished", not complete.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

If I get rid of the input item, then just the second error is reported, so a simple opening of and form and closing it still wont validate!

Please can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?!

Dave

richard.york · April 27th, 2005, 08:13 AM

It wants a containing element for that <input> element.

This validates as HTML Strict:

Code:

 1: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
 2: <html>
 3:     <head>
 4:         <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
 5:         <title>Test WebSite</title>
 6:         <style type="text/css">
 7:         <!--
 8:             body {
 9:                 font-family: verdana, sans-serif;
10:             }
11:         -->
12:         </style>
13:     </head>
14:     <body>
15:         <div id="mainbody">
16:             <form action="search.asp" method="post">
17:             <div>
18:                 <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search">
19:             </div>
20:             </form>
21:         </div>
22:     </body>
23: </html>

Don't know why there /must/ be a containing element between the <form> and the <input> doesn't seem like it should matter, but apparently it does.

If you change the DOCTYPE to HTML Transitional, it will validate in its original form.

BTW, this question is off-topic for this forum, please post markup questions in the HTML forum http://p2p.wrox.com/html-code-clinic-90/.

HTH!

Regards,
Rich

--
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Author: Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets For Web Design

steamydave · April 27th, 2005, 10:39 AM

Thanks very much Rich.

Will give it a go. I have for now set the page to Transitional, and as you say, no problem there!

Sorry for being "off-topic"

, newby to forum and validation! Have been validating the CSS as well.

Glad you picked it up in the wrong place as I would never have tried the inner container method.

Thanks again,

Dave