I would like to address an issue that I have with S9y plugins in general. I am not a developer or programmer myself, but I have a basic to more than average understanding of programming and such.
First of all I would like to make clear that my remarks are just meant to encourage a discussion about improving quality and not to just make some negative statement or anything; I understand that developing plugins it probably not something you all do for a living, but just for fun or as some learning experience.
Having said that, here is what I have noticed and also a 'solution' to what I think is something that needs attention too.
I think we all strive to make S9y and it's plugin's a quality product and Blog software. I already think highly of S9y and also I am very very happy with the support I always get in the forums (even for dumb questions), so kudos for that to all developers and the S9y community!
As such I see that S9y itself tries hard to follow all W3C rules.
However: any given time I try to validate my blog by using the W3C Markup validator (http://validator.w3.org/) I get lot's of errors.
Now, I have traced many of those to be my own fault (namely: copy & pasting code to embed YouTube videos and such), but 99% of all other validation errors come from Plugins that do not follow the rules.
Some of them are really simple like not using <br /> and such. It also might be related to the use of HTML and XHTML syntax in one document (cause by plugins or template parts).
Also, I see that, S9y does not use encoded ampersands in URL's as described by the WDG in "Ampersands in URLs".
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Entity references start with an ampersand (&) and end with a semicolon (;). If you want to use a literal ampersand in your document you must encode it as "&" (even inside URLs!). Be careful to end entity references with a semicolon or your entity reference may get interpreted in connection with the following text. Also keep in mind that named entity references are case-sensitive; &Aelig; and æ are different characters.http://www.shortenurl.com/8akdh
Now, I think that what needs to be done is that S9y development should make sure that Plugins behave in the right way and have a certain quality standard before they are admitted to SPARTACUS. Sure: they are tested for functionality, but what about W3C rules?
Or: if they are not 'validated' to give the right output in conjunction with S9y, that this is made clear in the SPARTACUS back-end.
This can be done relatively simple: just add a "validated with S9y" line, or a "not yet validated with S9y".
That way at least people know beforehand that the plugin has not (yet) been tested for proper W3C approved output.
Another thing I would very much appreciate: a direct link from the SPARTACUS plugin description to a readme or other documentation! Too many times I see a reference to documentation that you can get AFTER you installed the plugin (to meet dependencies and such).
Spartacus is one of the MAIN attractions of S9y I think: it makes installing a plugin so easy! So why not have a link to the docs etc.?
Maybe I'm too anal about this, but 66 errors on my page is a bit much I think
Off course: if you do not use that many plugins as I do (I'm feature-crazy) you probably would have less errors.
Still, I think this "validated" bagde for plugins would be a good way to encourage developers to also check for basic W3C stuff
If there are any errors on my blog, ideally I would like them to be 'user errors' were I did something wrong myself, so i can only blame myself
I would very much like to hear what all you real developers think of this?
Regards,
Henk
<br />). In the long run quality will improve of S9Y and that serves everybody.
But I think I understood hgoor differently; I didn'T think that anyone was asking that I do this work?