Why is it most of the code provided by advertisers, tracking companies and marketers looks like something that was written in 1999? Seriously, aren’t these companies aware of the fact half the tags they are using aren’t even valid any more? Obviously they aren’t because they are still pumping out this nonsense.

So why am I fired up about this? Well as anyone that knows me knows I take pride in making sure every site I build validates. Then the customer wants to add some advertising, no big deal, that is until you see the code they are given. To make it worse half these companies don’t even properly write the ‘almost valid’ code they use. Things like capitalized attributes, attributes with no quotes around the values etc etc. Just drives me nuts.

I got one example today. I won’t mention the site but the code given was an iframe. Now that’s bad enough but then they have topmargin, bottommargin, leftmargin and rightmargin attributes on the iframe and just as a total slap in the face to any self respecting developer none of the attribute values have quotes around them. I mean seriously, why not just throw all the rules out the window? The scary part about this is that it is from a rather large advertising company but had I not known that I would have sworn someone copy and pasted it from a ‘psychedelic’ 1999, animated GIF website.

So now here I am, ready to destroy a perfectly valid website, not a single page will ever validate again thanks to these ads … sigh.

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