1.12.2 Syntax errors

Unintuitive error-handling behavior

Certain invalid syntax constructs, when parsed, result in DOM trees that are highly unintuitive.

For example, the following markup fragment results in a DOM with an hr element that is an earlier sibling of the correspondingtable element:

...
Errors with optional error recovery

To allow user agents to be used in controlled environments without having to implement the more bizarre and convoluted error handling rules, user agents are permitted to fail whenever encountering a parse error.
Errors where the error-handling behavior is not compatible with streaming user agents

Some error-handling behavior, such as the behavior for the 

... example mentioned above, are incompatible with streaming user agents (user agents that process HTML files in one pass, without storing state). To avoid interoperability problems with such user agents, any syntax resulting in such behavior is considered invalid.

Errors that can result in infoset coercion

When a user agent based on XML is connected to an HTML parser, it is possible that certain invariants that XML enforces, such as comments never containing two consecutive hyphens, will be violated by an HTML file. Handling this can require that the parser coerce the HTML DOM into an XML-compatible infoset. Most syntax constructs that require such handling are considered invalid.
Errors that result in disproportionally poor performance

Certain syntax constructs can result in disproportionally poor performance. To discourage the use of such constructs, they are typically made non-conforming.

For example, the following markup results in poor performance, since all the unclosed i elements have to be reconstructed in each paragraph, resulting in progressively more elements in each paragraph:
He dreamt.
He dreamt that he ate breakfast.
Then lunch.
And finally dinner.

The resulting DOM for this fragment would be:

p

i

#text: He dreamt.




p

i

i

#text: He dreamt that he ate breakfast.






p

i

i

i

#text: Then lunch.








p

i

i

i

i

#text: And finally dinner.












Errors involving fragile syntax constructs

There are syntax constructs that, for historical reasons, are relatively fragile. To help reduce the number of users who accidentally run into such problems, they are made non-conforming.

For example, the parsing of certain named character references in attributes happens even with the closing semicolon being omitted. It is safe to include an ampersand followed by letters that do not form a named character reference, but if the letters are changed to a string that does form a named character reference, they will be interpreted as that character instead.
In this fragment, the attribute’s value is “?bill&ted“:
Bill and Ted
In the following fragment, however, the attribute’s value is actually “?art©“, not the intended “?art&copy“, because even without the final semicolon, “&copy” is handled the same as “©” and thus gets interpreted as “©“:
Art and Copy
To avoid this problem, all named character references are required to end with a semicolon, and uses of named character references without a semicolon are flagged as errors.
Thus, the correct way to express the above cases is as follows:
Bill and Ted 
Art and Copy <!-- the & has to be escaped, since &copy is a named character reference -->

Errors involving known interoperability problems in legacy user agents

Certain syntax constructs are known to cause especially subtle or serious problems in legacy user agents, and are therefore marked as non-conforming to help authors avoid them.

For example, this is why the U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT character (`) is not allowed in unquoted attributes. In certain legacy user agents, it is sometimes treated as a quote character.


Another example of this is the DOCTYPE, which is required to trigger no-quirks mode, because the behavior of legacy user agents in quirks mode is often largely undocumented.

Errors that risk exposing authors to security attacks

Certain restrictions exist purely to avoid known security problems.

For example, the restriction on using UTF-7 exists purely to avoid authors falling prey to a known cross-site-scripting attack using UTF-7.

Cases where the author’s intent is unclear

Markup where the author’s intent is very unclear is often made non-conforming. Correcting these errors early makes later maintenance easier.

For example, it is unclear whether the author intended the following to be an h1 heading or an h2 heading:
Contact details

Cases that are likely to be typos

When a user makes a simple typo, it is helpful if the error can be caught early, as this can save the author a lot of debugging time. This specification therefore usually considers it an error to use element names, attribute names, and so forth, that do not match the names defined in this specification.

For example, if the author typed  instead of 
















, this would be flagged as an error and the author could correct the typo immediately.


Errors that could interfere with new syntax in the future

In order to allow the language syntax to be extended in the future, certain otherwise harmless features are disallowed.

For example, “attributes” in end tags are ignored currently, but they are invalid, in case a future change to the language makes use of that syntax feature without conflicting with already-deployed (and valid!) content.



Some authors find it helpful to be in the practice of always quoting all attributes and always including all optional tags, preferring the consistency derived from such custom over the minor benefits of terseness afforded by making use of the flexibility of the HTML syntax. To aid such authors, conformance checkers can provide modes of operation wherein such conventions are enforced.
1.12.3 Restrictions on content models and on attribute values
This section is non-normative.
Beyond the syntax of the language, this specification also places restrictions on how elements and attributes can be specified. These restrictions are present for similar reasons:

Errors involving content with dubious semantics

To avoid misuse of elements with defined meanings, content models are defined that restrict how elements can be nested when such nestings would be of dubious value.
For example, this specification disallows nesting a section element inside a kbd element, since it is highly unlikely for an author to indicate that an entire section should be keyed in.

Errors that involve a conflict in expressed semantics

Similarly, to draw the author’s attention to mistakes in the use of elements, clear contradictions in the semantics expressed are also considered conformance errors.

In the fragments below, for example, the semantics are nonsensical: a separator cannot simultaneously be a cell, nor can a radio button be a progress bar.



Another example is the restrictions on the content models of the ul element, which only allows li element children. Lists by definition consist just of zero or more list items, so if a ul element contains something other than an li element, it’s not clear what was meant.

Cases where the default styles are likely to lead to confusion

Certain elements have default styles or behaviors that make certain combinations likely to lead to confusion. Where these have equivalent alternatives without this problem, the confusing combinations are disallowed.
For example, div elements are rendered as block boxes, and span elements as inline boxes. Putting a block box in an inline box is unnecessarily confusing; since either nesting just div elements, or nesting just span elements, or nesting span elements insidediv elements all serve the same purpose as nesting a div element in a span element, but only the latter involves a block box in an inline box, the latter combination is disallowed.
Another example would be the way interactive content cannot be nested. For example, a button element cannot contain atextarea element. This is because the default behavior of such nesting interactive elements would be highly confusing to users. Instead of nesting these elements, they can be placed side by side.

Errors that indicate a likely misunderstanding of the specification

Sometimes, something is disallowed because allowing it would likely cause author confusion.
For example, setting the disabled attribute to the value “false” is disallowed, because despite the appearance of meaning that the element is enabled, it in fact means that the element is disabled (what matters for implementations is the presence of the attribute, not its value).

Errors involving limits that have been imposed merely to simplify the language

Some conformance errors simplify the language that authors need to learn.
For example, the area element’s shape attribute, despite accepting both circ and circle values in practice as synonyms, disallows the use of the circ value, so as to simplify tutorials and other learning aids. There would be no benefit to allowing both, but it would cause extra confusion when teaching the language.

Errors that involve peculiarities of the parser

Certain elements are parsed in somewhat eccentric ways (typically for historical reasons), and their content model restrictions are intended to avoid exposing the author to these issues.

For example, a form element isn’t allowed inside phrasing content, because when parsed as HTML, a form element’s start tag will imply a p element’s end tag. Thus, the following markup results in two paragraphs, not one:
Welcome. Name: 
It is parsed exactly like the following:
Welcome. 
Name: 


Errors that would likely result in scripts failing in hard-to-debug ways

Some errors are intended to help prevent script problems that would be hard to debug.
This is why, for instance, it is non-conforming to have two id attributes with the same value. Duplicate IDs lead to the wrong element being selected, with sometimes disastrous effects whose cause is hard to determine.

Errors that waste authoring time

Some constructs are disallowed because historically they have been the cause of a lot of wasted authoring time, and by encouraging authors to avoid making them, authors can save time in future efforts.
For example, a script element’s src attribute causes the element’s contents to be ignored. However, this isn’t obvious, especially if the element’s contents appear to be executable script — which can lead to authors spending a lot of time trying to debug the inline script without realizing that it is not executing. To reduce this problem, this specification makes it non-conforming to have executable script in a script element when the src attribute is present. This means that authors who are validating their documents are less likely to waste time with this kind of mistake.

Errors that involve areas that affect authors migrating to and from XHTML

Some authors like to write files that can be interpreted as both XML and HTML with similar results. Though this practice is discouraged in general due to the myriad of subtle complications involved (especially when involving scripting, styling, or any kind of automated serialization), this specification has a few restrictions intended to at least somewhat mitigate the difficulties. This makes it easier for authors to use this as a transitionary step when migrating between HTML and XHTML.
For example, there are somewhat complicated rules surrounding the lang and xml:lang attributes intended to keep the two synchronized.
Another example would be the restrictions on the values of xmlns attributes in the HTML serialization, which are intended to ensure that elements in conforming documents end up in the same namespaces whether processed as HTML or XML.

Errors that involve areas reserved for future expansion

As with the restrictions on the syntax intended to allow for new syntax in future revisions of the language, some restrictions on the content models of elements and values of attributes are intended to allow for future expansion of the HTML vocabulary.
For example, limiting the values of the target attribute that start with an U+005F LOW LINE character (_) to only specific predefined values allows new predefined values to be introduced at a future time without conflicting with author-defined values.

Errors that indicate a mis-use of other specifications

Certain restrictions are intended to support the restrictions made by other specifications.
For example, requiring that attributes that take media queries use only valid media queries reinforces the importance of following the conformance rules of that specification.


1.13 Suggested reading
This section is non-normative.
The following documents might be of interest to readers of this specification.

Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals [CHARMOD]


This Architectural Specification provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web, building on the Universal Character Set, defined jointly by the Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC 10646. Topics addressed include use of the terms ‘character’, ‘encoding’ and ‘string’, a reference processing model, choice and identification of character encodings, character escaping, and string indexing.


Unicode Security Considerations [UTR36]


Because Unicode contains such a large number of characters and incorporates the varied writing systems of the world, incorrect usage can expose programs or systems to possible security attacks. This is especially important as more and more products are internationalized. This document describes some of the security considerations that programmers, system analysts, standards developers, and users should take into account, and provides specific recommendations to reduce the risk of problems.


Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 [WCAG]


Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.


Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 [ATAG]


This specification provides guidelines for designing Web content authoring tools that are more accessible for people with disabilities. An authoring tool that conforms to these guidelines will promote accessibility by providing an accessible user interface to authors with disabilities as well as by enabling, supporting, and promoting the production of accessible Web content by all authors.


User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0 [UAAG]


This document provides guidelines for designing user agents that lower barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities. User agents include browsers and other types of software that retrieve and render Web content. A user agent that conforms to these guidelines will promote accessibility through its own user interface and through other internal facilities, including its ability to communicate with other technologies (especially assistive technologies). Furthermore, all users, not just users with disabilities, should find conforming user agents to be more usable.







4.2.3 The base element

The base element allows authors to specify the document base URL for the purposes of resolving relative URLs, and the name of the defaultbrowsing context for the purposes of following hyperlinks. The element does not represent any content beyond this information.Categories:
Metadata content.
Contexts in which this element can be used:
In a head element containing no other base elements.
Content model:
Empty.
Tag omission in text/html:
No end tag.
Content attributes:
Global attributes
href — Document base URL
target — Default browsing context for hyperlink navigation and form submission
DOM interface:

interface HTMLBaseElement : HTMLElement {
           attribute DOMString href;
           attribute DOMString target;
};


There must be no more than one base element per document.
A base element must have either an href attribute, a target attribute, or both.
The href content attribute, if specified, must contain a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces.
A base element, if it has an href attribute, must come before any other elements in the tree that have attributes defined as taking URLs, except the html element (its manifest attribute isn’t affected by base elements).

If there are multiple base elements with href attributes, all but the first are ignored.

The target attribute, if specified, must contain a valid browsing context name or keyword, which specifies which browsing context is to be used as the default when hyperlinks and forms in the Document cause navigation.
A base element, if it has a target attribute, must come before any elements in the tree that represent hyperlinks.

If there are multiple base elements with target attributes, all but the first are ignored.
The href IDL attribute, on getting, must return the result of running the following algorithm:


If the base element has no href content attribute, then return the document base URL and abort these steps.


Let fallback base url be the Document‘s fallback base URL.


Let url be the value of the href attribute of the base element.


Resolve url relative to fallback base url (thus, the base href attribute isn’t affected by xml:base attributes or base elements).


If the previous step was successful, return the resulting absolute URL and abort these steps.


Otherwise, return the empty string.


The href IDL attribute, on setting, must set the href content attribute to the given new value.
The target IDL attribute must reflect the content attribute of the same name.


In this example, a base element is used to set the document base URL:


    
        This is an example for the <base> element
        
    
    
        
Visit the archives.

    

The link in the above example would be a link to “http://www.example.com/news/archives.html“.





	

	

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