BleepingComputer.com: Some validation help.

I'm really new at this, and my page looks pretty good on the 7 or so browsers I've tested on. The problem: when I run it through the W3C validation it comes up with 37 errors and 1 warning. The problem is I don't understand what their issues are with my page. They seem like really basic errors, but when I look through the code I can't figure it out.

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These are the most common errors. If someone can give me some ideas on what the problem might be that would be helpful. From what I've googled I keep running into people saying that it's open div tags, but it's not. The few that I used are closed. This web form is an application, so there's lots of tables within tables. I'll be happy to post code if requested. Thanks.

I should also note that when I validate in Dreamweaver it comes up error free. Am I doing something wrong when I upload to validate? Is it because there's an external CSS sheet?

Can't say without seeing your code, but the error is telling you that you are missing a tag. Whether that means it is actually missing a tag, or you are using the wrong doctype, I can't tell.

It sounds like maybe the wrong doctype. But like groovy said, without the source code there's no way to tell.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

It was indeed missing tags. It seems validation was not happy with the way I closed a couple tables.
I had:

</table>

adding

</td></tr></table>

seemed to fix it. Not sure why that is, as I was pretty careful about closing cells and rows since I hand coded 99% of the tables.

I'd like to show you, but there's over 300 lines of code and I'm not sure what would be helpful to post. The coding is an application for funding, so it's literally tables within tables within tables. I didn't want to spam the board with pages of coding. Unless there's another way to share this information?

I've gone through all the W3Schools tutorials on CSS and HTML and feel like I have a pretty good grasp on this, but I want to learn more. Can either one of you recommend a good book on web design and site building that isn't incredibly boring? My Javascript book is so dull, I can hardly stand opening it.

Doug E Fresh, on Feb 25 2010, 06:11 PM, said:

http://pastebin.com/

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It's an oldie, but I still recommend it as a great starting point for HTML/java script: HTML In An Instant

Ah, thanks. Very cool site. Pastebin Line 190 was one of the ones I fixed. I can't seem to find the other one, but it was a similar issue. I don't know too much about whether or not the Doctype is correct, since Dreamweaver always writes that part for me.

Another issue: I have to figure out how to get this to look good once it's transferred from html to pdf. Our website is currently using pdf applications that I create in Indesign, but the web guy wants to switch to html apps that will be converted to pdf after they're filled out, or archived, or something like that(I honestly don't know the details). Is it safe to assume that pretty much any open source html-pdf program I use will do the exact same thing? For example, I used one on my Mac called wrkpdf and it worked pretty well, except some tables have some extra borders around them, and he already told me I need to fix this. The web guy who will ultimately be using this will be using dompdf. I'm clueless as to how to use that program, so even if I fire up my PC I probably still won't know what I'm doing.

Thanks for the book recommendation as well. I placed an order for it from Amazon. It cost all of $0.01. $4.00 even with shipping.

I haven't a clue how one would go about generating a PDF in a web app, but I'm sure it can be done.