Generated HTML compliance with W3C?

Vasco Névoa

Question

Hi all. New OS developer here.

I've been running the W3 validator on the OS generated pages because this is one of the requirements for Accessibility.

I'm surprised to find that the validator indicates many HTML spec errors, mostly from obsolete attributes or obsolete ways of using elements. From their point of view, the generated code looks very "old".
What jumps out at us is that, even though OS Studio favors CSS usage, it still generates a lot of old-style formatting (such as align="left") that should be placed in CSS (according to the specs).

You can check your own OS App by running it through this: https://validator.w3.org/nu/

Question 1: is this a real issue, or just W3 being pedantic? I assume it must be a real risk for Accessible User Agents, or they would not be complaining ( https://www.acessibilidade.gov.pt/accessmonitor/ ).

Question 2: does Outsystems have it in their roadmap to update the HTML generator in order to more fully comply with the specs?

Thank you,
Vasco

07 Jul 2015

MVP

First of all, yes, W3 is very pedantic.
Imho, the internet goes faster than W3 (which is kinda ironic)

Second, you can do a lot making the site much more compliant.
in inline style elements is caused by setting the align-property and such.
If you keep all those proerties empty there would be much less inline styling.

Third, depending on the stack you are running on, it also provides you with challenges.

But I agree they should implement some improvements.

08 Jul 2015

Wim De Maeyer

Hi All,

We're developing a site for a customer, who had it reviewed by an SEO specialist. Feedback on the OutSystems generated HTML wasn't great especially on not applying CSS properly.

Does anyone know if this is on the OutSystems roadmap please ?

Cheers, Wim

24 Jul 2015

Joshua Austin

Hi Wim,

Beyond the well-known search engine penalties Google is enforcing if your site is not responsive, how is search engine optimization affected by CSS styles? Isn't SEO about content and metadata?

Thanks,
Josh

24 Jul 2015

Wim De Maeyer

Hi Josh, I also thought seo was mainly about content, URLs and tags. But what the SEO review brought to light is that not having CSS applied 'properly' means the size of the html becomes big and therefore less interesting to search engines. The content gets diffused by all the other stuff is what they tell me.

also, if I check the site in w3c it says that styling tags are obsolete and recommends to use CSS.

I I realise we have little control over the html generation but any recommendation on making the content more prominent will help us a lot.

Cheers

24 Jul 2015

Joshua Austin

But what the SEO review brought to light is that not having CSS applied 'properly' means the size of the html becomes big and therefore less interesting to search engines. The content gets diffused by all the other stuff is what they tell me.

That is a good point. I hadn't thought of it that way, but that makes sense. Thanks for sharing!

25 Jul 2015

MVP

@wim.

Well, I admit inline-styling is of the past, but you can do a lot yourself.
Like I said before:

align, margin-top, margin-left, min-height
Those attributes will be generated as inline-styles.
It's a nice feature, but don't use them if you want comply at least better.

27 Jul 2015

Community GuidelinesBe kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting.

See the full guidelines