Re: lynx-dev Lynx and the <OBJECT> tag

[Klaus Weide]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Eric Sandeen wrote:

> Hi - Perhaps you can help...
> 
> The W3C HTML validator told me that I needed <OBJECT> tags around my
> tables, so I put them there... 

No, it didn't really tell you that, see below...

> but now it breaks Lynx.  Lynx only
> displays the HTML within the innermost set of <OBJECT> tags.  Is this a
> problem with my code, or with Lynx?  

It may be both.

1) There isn't really a reason (AFAIK) why you would want OBJECT at all.
2) There *were* problems with nested OBJECT elements in 2.8.2.  The code
   has changed in the 2.8.3 development code
      <http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/current/>.
   (But again, there isn't a good reason why you should be running into
   this problem in the first place - you don't need <OBJECT> tags at all,
   nested or otherwise.)

> I can't find any good examples of
> <OBJECT> tag use, so maybe I'm doing something dumb.

The HTML 4 spec from http://www.w3.org/ has examples.

> See the page at http://grader.sourceforge.net/grader_main.html for a
> demonstration...
> 
> I'm using lynx 2.8.2rel.1

You were most likely getting a message like this from the W3C validator:

   <TABLE WIDTH=500>
                   ^
       Error: document type does not allow element "TABLE" here; missing
       one of "APPLET",
       "OBJECT", "MAP", "IFRAME", "BUTTON" start-tag

That's correct, but misleading - it doesn't really help you understand
what the original problem is.  The original problem is your attempt to
use a FONT element surrounding a table.

The WDG validator at <http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/> gives
more useful hints here (and in other situations), so use that instead
of the W3C one.

In the case of your original text (without OBJECT), you should get

        <[7]TABLE WIDTH=500>
                        ^
       Error: element [8]TABLE not allowed here; possible cause is an
       [9]inline element
       containing a [10]block-level element

and follow the links for explanation.

   Klaus