zoom form not valid html?

[Anonymous]

Hello, I really like the zoom search product.

I'm trying to validate the HTML on my site, and am being told that the search form part is not valid. I am validating to strict HTML 4.0.1. Does anyone have any ideas as to why this might be?

The validator is saying:

^^^

document type does not allow element "INPUT" here; missing one of "P", "H1", "H2", "H3", "H4", "H5", "H6", "PRE", "DIV", "ADDRESS" start-tag

<input type="text" name="zoom_query" size="20">

The mentioned element is not allowed to appear in the context in which you've placed it; the other mentioned elements are the only ones that are both allowed there and can contain the element mentioned. This might mean that you need a containing element, or possibly that you've forgotten to close a previous element.

One possible cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a block-level element (such as "

" or "<table>") inside an inline element (such as "<a>", "<span>", or "<font>").

and

end tag for "FORM" which is not finished

</form>

Most likely, You nested tags and closed them in the wrong order. For example

[i]...</p> is not acceptable, as [i] must be closed before

. Acceptable nesting is:

...</p>

Another possibility is that you used an element (e.g. 'ul') which requires a child element (e.g. 'li') that you did not include. Hence the parent element is "not finished", not complete

^^^

I've taken the form out of my divs and put it just in my "body" section, which I thought would work, but still the same errors. I haven't changed the code of the form at all.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Katie

[Ray]

I assume you are using the search form HTML from this page:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support...tml#searchform

We just checked that it indeed does not validate for "HTML 4.0 Strict" as it is. It only requires a small change however, specifically that it needed a

tag pair within the <form>. That is:

<form method="GET" action="search.php">
    


    <input type="text" name="zoom_query" size="20">
    <input type="submit" value="Search">
    [size="1"] Results per page&#58; 
    <select name='zoom_per_page'>
        <option selected>10</option>
        <option >20</option>
        <option >100</option>
    </select>

Match&#58; 
    <input type="radio" name="zoom_and" value="0" checked>any search words 
    <input type="radio" name="zoom_and" value="1">all search words [/size] 
    </p>
</form>

We usually validate our HTML against Transitional doctypes, and since Version 4.0 the primary doctype we work towards is now "XHTML 1.0 Transitional".

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your help Ray, and yes that was where I took my form code from (I had forgotten where it came from).

I knew you were aiming for XHTML from all the "/>"s I had to take out of search.php!

Putting the

and </p> tags in the form above means it does now validate to strict HTML.

Thanks again for a brilliant free product.

Katie