I had my first Friday off in – I don’t even remember how long – and I spent almost the entire day validating XHTML for this blog. If I never have to fix XHTML errors again it would be too soon.

Most of the errors came from the MCE editor’s attempt at “fixing” open paragraphs which were never open. I had several hundred errors involving closed P tags. I guess the MCE editor thinks that everything should be enclosed in a P tag, even if it is not a paragraph.

My biggest frustration with these closed P tags came when I tried to fix my list headers. The MCE editor doesn’t understand that anything contained within “<lh></lh>” is not a paragraph, so it wouldn’t stop adding the “</p>” after the closed LH. I even tried to add LH as a valid element for TinyMCE, but it didn’t help. Ultimately, the editor won, and I had to remove all of my LH tags and use the stupid P tag just before the list. It doesn’t look the same, and I really wish I could keep TinyMCE from screwing with valid tags.

In the end, I ended up with valid XHTML on all but two pages, both of which had 50+ errors involving closed P tags which were never opened. I think I’ll fix those another day.