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Running the homepage through the Fox (with HTML validator) flagged 117 warnings. Let's see: there's incorrect nesting of elements, a peculiar instance of about:blank, proprietary attributes (the validator might mention "tabindex" on a h1 only once, but it's everywhere), inline JavaScript (in this day and age?), unescaped character entities, empty attributes for things that should have value (like img height WTF?), named anchors with + in them (invalid character according to the specs, use - instead) and a whole bunch of empty spans for no good reason.

Also included is the idea that the source should be on one line (yet they don't remove excess tabs), even though there are rendering issues in older browsers if the linelength is too long. The content-type <meta /> is repeated, with different values and to top it off, the very first <h1> is a list header for related sites, not where you are right now.

As for the CSS, all the usual proprietary crap is in there, instead of being in a separate file.

As far as accessibility goes, the homepage passes 508, fails WAI and is rated A. With a little effort it could have been AA. With just a little bit more effort it could have been AAA.

Months of testing? That testing took me 30s in just one browser.

Addendum: Why HTML4 Transitional? Transitional from what? 3.2 is obsolete, so there's nothing to transition from.

Once again... who cares!? I seen many 100% valid sites that don't look like I'd care for them and I see many none 100% valid sites what work just fine, all this "standard" nonesense really has no affect on my browsing. for better or worse.

btw the previous MS site was 100% valid according to opera validator

Also! I suggest we pay attention to apple.com , I smell a change coming there , wonder what kind.

Once again... who cares!? I seen many 100% valid sites that don't look like I'd care for them and I see many none 100% valid sites what work just fine, all this "standard" nonesense really has no affect on my browsing.

Which is a classic example of the slavish adherence to the "don't give a crap" attitude that comes from Microsoft that has been forced on people so much they now don't accept anything else. Microsoft helped make the standards and then don't adhere to them. I'd be ashamed to put out a site that had that much wrong with it, and is is frankly disgusting that a company that is supposed to be on top of the whole internet thang produces such rubbish and people defend it.

Try navigating around the site in a browser with the styles disabled (your choice depending on ease of stylesheet user control, you could even use Netscape 4 or IE 5.2/Mac as the styles aren't parsed in the first place), and then you might have some idea of how crap it really is.

It's nice enough I suppose, nicer than most of the sites I regularly go to (including neowin's latest theme - sorry guys) but unlike those sites, I think it's a bit awkward to use. It's nice to look at, but do we really need a giant ad taking up 3/4 of the main page? I don't think so. I don't go to Microsoft's site to look at the fancy new technologies and stuff they have on offer, 99% of the time it's either because I want to get into the Knowledge base or download an update.

Is that done in SharePoint? :|

MS has 3 big things on at the moment: Vista, O2K7 and SP2k7. I guess they had to do the company site with the best web technologies out there.

Ooops, I can feel the flames. But seriously if you have looked at what is on offer with SPS, SPOffice and SPP 2007, it is just amazing what can be done.

Looks nice & also wierd,suppose its just a case of I'll get used to it like IE7,Clicking onto the downloads section it froze for a few seconds then let me go down the list,why are they linking to Beta Place?,Connect is now the place for beta stuff,clicking the Beta Place link brung up this in IE7:

There is a problem with this website's security certificate.

The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.

Click here to close this webpage.

Continue to this website (not recommended).

More information

If you arrived at this page by clicking a link, check the website address in the address bar to be sure that it is the address you were expecting.

When going to a website with an address such as https://example.com, try adding the 'www' to the address, https://www.example.com.

If you choose to ignore this error and continue, do not enter private information into the website.

For more information, see "Certificate Errors" in Internet Explorer Help.

I clicked continue & got this:

Page Not Found

The content that you requested cannot be found or you do not have permission to view it.

If you believe you have reached this page in error, click the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page to report the issue and include this ID in your e-mail: e211d2ee-e44e-4862-9bc2-c9f636dea338

Microsoft Connect welcome page.

now this is a bit pointless,MS should just link to Connect directly

Wow just five errors to HTML 4.01 Trans. That's a record for Microsoft! http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&am...%2Fdefault.aspx

CSS is awful as usual though... http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validat...%2Fdefault.aspx

I like the design a lot.

NOOOOO!!!! Not CSS compliance!!!! :rofl:

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