Post Archive
› February 1, 2005
MSN as XHTML?
MSN.com has gone all XHTMLish? Sort of? I'm not a big validation stickler (it's a tool, not a label), but 130 errors on the home page is a lot. Weirdly, many are font tags rendered through javascript in an inline script intended to open a popup and populate it with a HTML 4.0 markup. Several things render differently in different browsers - which is not a critique, but it is a little extra ugly in Safari. I don't have time to pick it apart further, but it's an interesting redesign to note.
While you're there, take a look at those search results! Clean, fast, and easy to read - and with RSS at the bottom! Also, only 2 small validation errors on the search result page.
Do you have more time to investigate and analyze? I'd enjoy hearing what you find, leave notes in a comment to this post.
UPDATE: also read this much more comprehensive review at stopdesign.
UPDATE: To clarify - what I found weird was that HTML 4 was used within that survey popup, when the site is generally written in XHTML. Not that there is anything weird or wrong with HTML 4 itself.
Comments
1. February 1, 2005 01:55 PM
2. February 1, 2005 01:59 PM
Nate Posted…
Oh that is nice and lightweight and clean. I think the MSN Search update is the bigger story here.
3. February 1, 2005 02:21 PM
Ryan Posted…
I like the new design much better. It is lighter weight and loads faster, however, the design could still use a little work in my opinion. I think they could improve the header and border spacing - maybe some rounded corners too. I like the Simple White better than the Classic Blue.
Safari and OmniWeb don't display the form buttons correctly, but other then that I do not see any major differences between them and Firefox. It looks uglier on Comino, but it is absolutely HIDEOUS in Internet Explorer 5.2 on OS X! Completely messed up and unusable. I realize Microsoft is no longer supporting IE on the Mac, but a lot of people still use it, and msn.com comes up by default for every new window in IE. They should fix this.
4. February 1, 2005 03:07 PM
Nate Posted…
Interesting point Ryan, yes the www.msn.com home page is not happy in Mac IE, interestingly the search.msn.com and results page look great in Mac IE.
5. February 1, 2005 03:26 PM
Anne Posted…
Please point out the differences between HTML 4.0 markup and XHTML 1.0 markup. If you can't find any, you might want to correct the post.
6. February 1, 2005 03:32 PM
mattymcg Posted…
Doug Bowman has a good critique, covering the design as well as the markup.
7. February 1, 2005 03:37 PM
8. February 1, 2005 04:31 PM
Will Hayworth Posted…
The redesign is nicer largely due to faster page load times and a slightly less cluttered interface than before. Microsoft's made some progress, but they're in no way finished. The validation errors come with many major portals; CNet.com has approximately 1,081 errors, and Yahoo has 272 errors.
9. February 1, 2005 05:15 PM
10. February 2, 2005 08:40 PM
Justin Posted…
Ironically, http://www.msn.com has 21 validation errors, while http://www.spreadfirefox.com has over 90. The official Firefox one is perfect, though.
11. December 27, 2005 11:59 AM
Ron Posted…
All those validation errors on the MSN homepage were within divs marked as "advertisement" -- their ad engine was injecting the bad markup. That's also why the number of errors seemed to vary day-to-day. But for the last month now, www.msn.com has validated as 100% strict. Doesn't that make the MSN homepage the largest (traffic-wise) site to be 100% XHTML strict compliant?
Andreas Posted…
Hmm. Searching with MSN.com still returns results from the MSN Search beta (see the URI). The equally new MSN Search page doesn't have this problem.
About validation: the MSN Search front page is really neat. Very light and only one validation error:
VCARD_NAME="SearchText"- do they really need this attribute?