Videos and XHTML Strict (or: a rant about Google Video and YouTube)

Recently I posted a video of Ace, my cat, playing around. The video was uploaded to Google Videos, as I knew I could later embed the video in the post.

When I validated my home page a few days later, as I do from time to time to see that it still conforms to the XHTML Strict standard, I was surprised to realize that it does not conform to the standard because of the video code I inserted into the post. I tried looking for a solution, but the truth is that I didn’t want to be looking a solution. I expected Google to provide me with standard-conforming code.

You may (or may not) know that Google supports standards and encourages website owners to make their code standard-conforming. It is a common belief that the more a website is standard-conforming the more it is likely to be indexed correctly by search engine, like Google’s.

So, following my disappointment with Google, I uploaded the video to YouTube, hoping that their code would be standard conforming. I was upset to see that it wasn’t, but at least with YouTube I found a quick fix and now my website has the video and is standard-conforming to XHTML Strict.