HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition
by Bill Kennedy, Chuck Musciano

The unconfirmed error reports are from readers.  They have not yet been 
approved or disproved by the author or editor and represent solely the
opinion of the reader.

Here's a key to the markup:
        [page-number]: serious technical mistake
        {page-number}: minor technical mistake
        <page-number>: important language/formatting problem
        (page-number): language change or minor formatting problem
        ?page-number?: reader question or request for clarification

This page was updated October 12, 2004.


UNCONFIRMED  errors and comments from readers: 


{16}  code sample;
<a href="http://www.ora.com">O'Reilly & Associates</a>

The '&' should be represented by its character entity.


{49}  Figure 3.2;
The HTML code says:

<title>HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide</title>

but the following picture shows this title:

HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide

So the code shows "and", but the picture shows "&".


[224]  Example HTML after third paragraph;
The code given here, in section 7.4.1 (and also the code given on the next page, page
225, in section 7.4.2), is *not* valid XHTML, at least according to the W3C validator
at http://validator.w3.org/ .  (It *is* accepted by the browsers I tried it on, and
could well be valid HTML.)

The problem, so far as I can tell, is that, in XML, one can't nest lists in this
manner.  The way to fix it (or, at least, one way to fix it), is as follows (note
that each nested <ul> is now *inside* its preceding <li>, and the closing </li> comes
later, after the closing </ul>):

<ul>
  <li>Morning Kumquat Delicacies
  <ul>
    <li>Hot Dishes
    <ul>
      <li>Kumquat omelet</li>
      <li>Kumquat waffles
      <ul>
        <li>Country style</li>
        <li>Belgian</li>
      </ul></li>
      <li>Kumquats and toast</li>
    </ul></li>
    <li>Cold Dishes
    <ul>
      <li>Kumquats and cornflakes</li>
      <li>Pickled Kumquats</li>
      <li>Diced Kumquats</li>
    </ul></li>
  </ul></li>
</ul>


[307]  Underneath the box;
The authors state that the <span> tag is deprecated. It is not. It is part of html
4.01 strict and validates on the W3 validator.


[330]  1st paragraph;
Not having I.E. 5.0 installed anywhere handy, I can not verify if 5.0 does support
the <BUTTON> element as described.  However, 5.5 certainly does not.


The <BUTTON TYPE="SUBMIT" NAME="myName" VALUE="myValue">myContents</BUTTON> element
does not seem to be behave in Internet Explorer 5.5 as described by section 9.6.
First, the VALUE attribute is ignored.  Second, the contents of the button are
submitted as the value.  Third, the name/value pair (in this case name/contents) are
submitted even if the button is not clicked.

Page 331, paragraph 1 states "The only reason is to provide far richer content for
buttons."  However, with the mentioned flaws in I.E. 5.5, the button element is not
useful for server processed forms since there is no way for the server to identify if
a button was clicked.

Ex:

<FORM METHOD="GET">
 <BUTTON TYPE="SUBMIT" NAME="myName" VALUE="Button1">contents1</BUTTON>
 <BUTTON TYPE="SUBMIT" NAME="myName" VALUE="Button2">contents2</BUTTON>
</FORM>


{337}  Attributs list;
I could not find the wrap attribute for the <textarea> tag in the HTML 4
specification.  Should there be little 'N' and 'I' icons after this attribute in the
list to indicate that this is an extension to the language?


{363}  10.2.1.1, first paragraph;
The text states that the 'align' attribute of the 'table' tag is deprecated in favor
of the 'align' property of Cascading Style Sheets.  However Cascading Style Sheets do
not have an 'align' property.  To achieve horizontal alignment, the 'margin-left' and
'margin-right' properties must be used.


(420)  12.2.1.4- code example;
Surely
<object code="clock.class"
should read
<object classid="clock.class"

(The authors do not list 'code' as an attribute of 'object' on p418)


{504}

<div
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML>x2/x</div">

if correctly written, it would appear like this:

<div
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">x2/x</div>

the xml namespace attribute must end with the quote,
but your example has the quote in the closing tag
</div>


[505]  2nd paragraph (the XHTML document) of 16.2.3;
The namespace of the sample is incorrect.  The path is shown as /TR/ but should be
/1999/ instead.  Also, the resource is shown as "xhtml1" but should be "xhtml"
instead.

Line currently printed as:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

Line should be:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

The XHTML fails to validate at w3.org as printed.

Note that this sample was printed correctly in 4th Edition.


[611]  Entire contents of Appendix F;
The authors claim to include all the character
entities but more than half are not included.  
Tell the authors to go look at

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html


(1000)  Chapter 3.6.1.1 2nd paragraph;
The book said "By default, the value of this tag is ltr, indicating that text is
presented to the user left to right. Use the other value, rtl, to display text right
to left, for languages like Chinese or Hebrew."

Chinese text is displayed from left to right, not right to left.