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Posted by Darin McGrew on October 12, 2007, 1:17 am
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> W3C's HTML 4.01 Specification indicates in Section 5.3 that the
> semi-colon at the end of an entity reference may be omitted in certain
> situations. The situations seem to be those in which an implied
> semi-colon can be readily inferred from the context (e.g., before a
> line-break or HTML tag). However, the Specification strongly recommends
> always using the semi-colon.
>
> Recently, I accidentally omitted a semi-colon at the end of &mdash that
> had blank characters before and after the entity reference. SeaMonkey
> displayed the page with an M-dash character in that location, which
> prevented me from detecting the omitted semi-colon during proof-reading.
> The W3C HTML validator did not note any improper use of the ampersand,
> which I interpret as meaning the entity reference was recognized as
> valid without the semi-colon.
>
> However, a friend using Internet Explorer sent me an E-mail asking what
> &mdash is. Thus, another IE failure to comply with the HTML 4.01
> Specification is demonstrated, as is the importance of the strong
> recommendation in the Specification.
Yep. And including all the optional closing tags (e.g., </p>, </li>, </td>)
helps MSIE come closer to getting the CSS right.
If only all MSIE workarounds could be automated as easily as these.
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp.com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/
"Predictions are difficult, especially about the future." - Casey Stengel
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