How significant are validation errors in contrib themes?
I am unsure how to handle the high number of validation errors in the contrib themes.
I build very small drupal web sites for non-profits. Nothing fancy, although they aren't brochure-ware type of sites (I use CCK, Views and Panels). Typically, as these sites have low budgets, I ask the non-profit to browse through the themes at themegarden.org and select one they like. Sometimes, they select several and ask me to choose the best one based on my judgment. We do some basic customization of the logo and colours and give the site to the client.
While most themes look great, they don't seem to adhere to web standards very much. And, I feel reluctant to put a client site on a theme that has lots of validation errors. For example, for a recent project, the client shortlisted the following themes:
1. Amadou: http://amadou.sp0ke.net/
2. iTheme: http://www.salle.ru/
3. Garamond: http://themegarden.org/drupal50/?q=node&theme=garamond
4. Golden Hour: http://goldenhour.sp0ke.net/
I ran the test at http://validator.w3.org/ for each of these themes and came up with the following results:
1. Amadou: not Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict!, Failed validation, 27 Errors
2. iThemes: not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!, Failed validation, 29 Errors
3. Garamond: not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!, Failed validation, 36 Errors
4. Golden Hour: not Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict!, Failed validation, 15 Errors
How does one handle this? Is this something important enough to worry about when building drupal sites? Are there any disadvantages/penalties to using themes with a high number of mark up validation errors?
It is good practice to
It is good practice to ensure that the theme validates, but the theme should normally display ok. It is cross-browser compatibility that could go wrong.
A lot of the time, themes don't validate because the id and class tags produced by nodes and blocks conflict with tags in the page. The issues should be fairly easy to fix but renaming in the stylesheet and page files.
Alternatively, perhaps this is something that could be brought up in the issues queue for each theme designer? I know that if somebody found that issue with one of mine, i'd want to fix it.
Magnity
http://webdesign.magnity.co.uk
Magnity, thank you. A lot
Magnity, thank you.
You're right. The majority of the errors reported by the validator were about id and class tags.
I have noticed these issues in the bug queues for some of the themes. I should probably do the same too, although I wish I could go a step further and actually contribute patches.
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Previously user venkat-rk.