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What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?

This is getting rather silly; if you insert tags using Windows Live Writer it creates divs with a guid ID; which is invalid, as id and name attributes cannot start with a number. If you insert images it adds a contenteditable attribute which it appears to have up on its very own.

*sigh* Lack of attention to detail Microsoft.

[edit: 22-May 2007] After posting my whinge on the Writer forums I got a response from one of the team; the ID issue will be fixed in the release after next (the next release is in code freeze right now) and he'll look at the contenteditable problem as well; woohoo!

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, XHTML

Monday, May 21, 2007 8:43 PM

Your Comments.

# re: What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?
This is not inattention to detail, it is a lack of priority. Several folks, including myself and Phil Haack have brought this to the attention to the WLW Team, and the official response has been...

1. Valid XHTML is not a priority
2. Valid XHTML is not going to be added anytime soon

3. Prove your CMS produces valid XHTML and is used on tens of thousands of sites and we'll think about it

This is paraphrasing of course, and the sarcastic tone is all mine but that, in essence, has been the WLW response.

Left by Carl Camera at 5/21/2007 10:32 PM
# re: What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?
I hear ya buddy! I just noticed the GUID thing the other day when trying to validate my own blog's XHTML... and it really sux because we've tried to be as compliant as possible when it comes to the code the Subtext emits.

All of that work - just to be shot in the foot by WLW. Crud.

Left by Steven Harman at 5/22/2007 1:57 AM
# re: What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?
I manually fix that up after inserting tags. Yes, I'm obsessive compulsive.

I plan to write a Subtext plugin specifically to clean up WLW posted content. ;)

Left by Haacked at 5/22/2007 5:43 AM
# re: What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?
Carl, if that was the way I came off in the forums, I'm sorry. As far as I can recall, my position has always been that XHTML needs to go through our team's prioritization process like any other feature or bug fix, and one easy way for me to convince everyone to bump up the priority is to show me that a lot of users will be affected by this. I certainly didn't mean to imply that we don't take XHTML seriously or that you need to prove anything to me or to Microsoft.

We (the WLW team) consider ourselves to be in the business of making our users happy. It's clear that our lack of XHTML support is a dealbreaker for a small but passionate group of users. We had a lot of other dealbreakers to fix first (and we are addressing a TON of them in a release that is coming soon!) but we definitely want to make you happy too.

Left by Joe Cheng [MSFT] at 5/23/2007 7:30 AM
# re: What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?
Joe, you're answer in the forums was quite professional. I added in the sarcastic tone myself.

It's perfectly understandable that WLW needs to prioritize feature requests. I'm encouraged to see that XHTML compliance remains on your radar screen as a gial.

Left by Carl Camera at 5/24/2007 3:24 PM
# re: What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?
@Haacked Exactly how do you 'fix' them?

Left by Steven Harman at 5/24/2007 6:17 PM
# re: What is with Windows Live Writer and invalid html?
I change the CSS class to "tags", I remove the ID, etc... The downside to my fixes is that WLW no longer recognizes it as a special content block.

I do a few other things as well such as replace " " with " ".

Left by Haacked at 5/24/2007 6:22 PM

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