Css

[CiberTHuG]

I need good documentation on why this is not valid.

body {
  background-color: #ffffff;
}

The W3C's doco is absolutely horrible. It does nothing to help promote the standard.

[chrismitchell]

Try spelling color differently... Try spelling it: colour.. I don't know other than that!

[scoutt]

is it for the background for the whole site? or just an element?

if for the whole site it is not valid, because you use this
body{
background: #FFFFFF;
}

and the background-color is for elements like <h1>

background

background-color

[CiberTHuG]

Well, I finally figured out what W3C was complaining about.

When you specify a background color you should specify a foreground color, too. It would suck if the user's CSS foreground color was the same as your document's background color.

The error message from W3C's validator just said "you have no color specified with background-color". That was confusing.

As to using background instead of background-color, that is a minor point. Both are supported in CSS2, but the validators do recommend using background unless you expressly need to set background-color and background-image differently. And even then, you can set both with background. Don't ask me why, I don't think they know.

[DKCK]

Of course it also depends on what browser is used. With Netscape, just about anything with CSS is not valid...

[CiberTHuG]

I very explicitly don't care about the browsers. All web development conforms to standards. If your browser has a problem viewing the page, then it has a problem with the standard. In those cases, I couldn't care less.

[scoutt]

well said Citizen Travis

If only the browser company cared about that

[JoshT]

Yeah, but no browser seems to fully conform to the standards, and when they do, there will be new standards written. Also, the standards can be interpreted in slightly different ways - I know Opera has said this about slight rendering differences between it and other browsers.

[DKCK]

I very explicitly don't care about the browsers. All web development conforms to standards. If your browser has a problem viewing the page, then it has a problem with the standard. In those cases, I couldn't care less.

You may not care less but those using browsers do..

[JoshT]

A lot of "normal" users won't even know what browser they're using -- "I click the blue 'e' to go on the Internet"...

[DKCK]

Most users don't even know what a browser is.

[CiberTHuG]

Originally posted by JoshT
Yeah, but no browser seems to fully conform to the standards, and when they do, there will be new standards written. Also, the standards can be interpreted in slightly different ways - I know Opera has said this about slight rendering differences between it and other browsers.

Yes, Opera's margins are bothering me right now, and Netscape still shows the outlines of invisible inputs.