CSS-laid out site feedback appreciated

[toicontien]

I recently redesigned www.cm-life.com, the online edition of Central Michigan University's student newspaper, using XHTML 1 Trans. and a CSS layout (no tables). Things seem to be working fine on the major browsers. Now I'm just looking for any kind of critisism: on design, markup, the CSS used, accessibility, anything.

There are a few problems right off the bat:

1. Pages do not validate as XHTML 1 Trans because the validator chokes on function calls in the href attribute of anchor tags. It seems to think these function calls to server-side scripts are embedded scripts on the HTML page of some sort. Has anyone else run into this problem (see the web site and view the source code to see what I'm talking about).

2. The second reason pages do not validate is because some "legacy" javascript is used to dynamically write ad banners to our site. I'm reluctant to change this code as I didn't write it, the code may be compensating for older browsers, and I'm not sure I can legally edit it because of the advertising agreement we have with our hosting company.

If you really care, some other features on the site:

* Total CSS layout, works on all browsers (so far at least).

* Print style sheets written for article pages.

* I plan on writing style sheets for aural browsers and handheld devices.

Some other sites to compare

Our web site is a part of the Digital Partners Network (www.digitalpartners.com), which gave us a content management system and ad system for us to work with. Other sites hosted by the same company are below:

http://www.michigandaily.com/
http://www.westernherald.com/
http://www.dailyemerald.com/
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/

Also please visit a related thread I created:

http://forums.webdeveloper.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14461

[Zero-x252]

#1. CSS is not accepted in ie3-/ns2- [I think its ns2 at least and for the record i know this because of my old computer]
#2. Great layout that uses ONLY CSS? [I know i shoulda viewed source]
#3. I don't do XHTML/XML so I wouldn't really know how to help you...

[Exuro]

You could probably fix your anchor tag problems by doing something like this:

<a href="#" onclick="callFunction()">

[PeOfEo]

when I view your source... I get a blank text file, whats up with that?

[toicontien]

To Exuro:

Actually, the function calls in are the action attribute for some form tags, not the href attribute of the anchor tag. Sorry for the confusion:


action="/vnews/display.v?TARGET=archive&function=search_results"


Again, these are function calls to the server to execute a PHP script and there's nothing I can do about those type of validation errors.

To PeOfEo

The source has several blank lines before the first line of code is displayed, or you're "getting" a blank document because our server is sending a no-cache header with the HTML file. You should be able to view source in Mozilla or IE just fine. If not, try tweaking your browser's cacheing settings.

[pyro]

Not sure if XHTML is the same as HTML 4.01 Strict in this regard, but in HTML 4.01 Strict, you need to change the & for &amp;amp; like this:

Will not validate HTML 4.01 Strict:
action="/vnews/display.v?TARGET=archive&function=search_results"

Will validate HTML 4.01 Strict:
action="/vnews/display.v?TARGET=archive&amp;amp;function=search_results"

[PeOfEo]

ahh I got it now.