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HTML5 <meta charset="utf-8">#11479

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Open

HTML5 <meta charset="utf-8">#11479
lerni wants to merge 1 commit into
silverstripe:6from
lerni:charset-utf-8

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@lerni

@lerni lerni commented Nov 26, 2024 •
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Description

<meta charset="utf-8"> should be used exclusively, instead of <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> or both as it is not needed for HTML5. W3C Validator also flags self-closing tags as an issue. While Symfony has reverted such a change, still it would make sense to remove those esp. in light of PHP 8.4 DOM HTML5 parsing. What is your opinion on handling self-closing tags?

Manual testing steps

A PR will follow in the CMS for ensuring HTML5 compliance. Additionally, simple theme should be updated to address this issue. Ultimately, only a single<meta charset="utf-8"> should be used.

Issues

#7438

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@lerni lerni mentioned this pull request Nov 26, 2024
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@GuySartorelli

GuySartorelli commented Dec 13, 2024

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<meta charset="utf-8"> should be used exclusively, instead of <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> or both as it is not needed for HTML5.

Is there some docs or an RFC or something along those lines you could link me to for this?

What is your opinion on handling self-closing tags?

If there is clear, specific advice from an appropriately authoritative source, then we should follow that advice. In the absence of specific advice I'd be inclined to leave them how they are.

@lerni

lerni commented Dec 15, 2024 •
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I think the links in #3031 should describe why to use <meta charset="utf-8"> instead of <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">.

Essentially, it's the way HTML5 is written those days. The longer version is a legacy from HTML4. The shorter version is recommended by the HTML5 specification, is easier to read and more concise. It's equally well supported and achieves the same result as the longer version.

As linked in #3031 W3C recommends not using trailing slashes on void elements. This is because it has no effect and interacts badly with unquoted attribute values.

  1. MDN Web Docs

  2. HTML Living Standard (WHATWG)

  3. W3C HTML5 Specification

The consensus across these sources is that trailing slashes on void elements:

  • Are unnecessary in HTML5
  • Add no semantic value
  • May cause issues with unquoted attributes
  • Should be omitted for cleaner, more consistent code

However, it's worth noting that DOMDocument versions before PHP 8.4 may not support void elements without trailing slashes, as linked above. I have no clear view on it, but sooner or later Silverstripe should follow the latest recommendations.

@lerni lerni closed this Mar 3, 2025
@lerni lerni reopened this Mar 3, 2025
@lerni

lerni commented Mar 4, 2025

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PHP DOMDocument shows its age or am I missing something? Since I wasn't able to make the tests below pass with <meta charset="utf-8"> instead of <html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head> I reverted this part and hopefully it can be solved with PHP 8.4 DOMDocument: https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration84.new-features.php#migration84.new-features.dom

There was 1 failure:
1) SilverStripe\View\Tests\Parsers\HTMLValueTest::testUtf8Saving
Failed asserting that two strings are equal.
--- Expected
+++ Actual
@@ @@
-'<p>ö ß ā い 家</p>'
+'<p>&ouml; &szlig; &#257; &#12356; &#23478;</p>'
/home/runner/work/silverstripe-framework/silverstripe-framework/tests/php/View/Parsers/HTMLValueTest.php:37
--

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2 participants

@lerni @GuySartorelli