With a few exceptions, this is a record of mainly just user-facing changes—that is, either changes to the actual behavior of the checker, or changes to any options/interfaces the checker exposes for developers.
05 November 2018 NN XXX NNNN
- Disallow
accept-charsetvalues other thanUTF-8 - Allow
rel=modulepreloadfor thelinkelement - CSS: Improve support for color values
05 November 2018
- Fix bugs that can cause the command-line checker to emit broken JSON output
- Allow
dppxandxand units in media queries
29 August 2018
- CSS: Allow unit-less values for stroke-width and other from-SVG props
- CSS: Bring checking up to date w/ CSS Align3; support font-display
23 July 2018
- Disable logging in the language detector
22 July 2018
- Allow the
decodingattribute for theimgelement - Allow the
allowattribute for theiframeelement (initial support) - Align ARIA checking further with ARIA in HTML spec requirements
- Restore the language-detection feature to vnu.jar command-line checker
- Ensure vnu.jar is always runnable under Java8, even if built under Java9
24 March 2018
- Add new major (optional) feature to command-line checker, Web-based checker, and network API to check CSS documents (in addition to HTML documents)
- Add new major feature to check that
styleelement contents andstyleattribute values in HTML documents are valid CSS - Add new (optional) feature to command-line checker to check SVG documents
- Add new option to command-line checker for specifying User-Agent string
- Add Dockerfile to Docker Hub https://hub.docker.com/r/validator/validator/
- Add ability to Web-based checker to check SVG documents by file upload
- Emit error (not warning) for HTML4/XHTML1 strict doctypes
- Further restrict
script[type]andstyle[type] - Allow the
autocapitalizeglobal attribute - Allow the
slotattribute (for Shadow DOM interaction) - Allow the
allowpaymentrequestattribute for theiframeelement - Allow only one non-hidden
mainelement per document - Allow only
html,body,div,form, custom elements asmainancestor - Allow
</caption>end tag to be omitted - Allow
role=nonewhererole=presentationis allowed - Allow
role=rowgroupelement to be contained inrole=tableelement - Allow
role=rowelement to be contained inrole=tableelement - Allow more values for
aria-haspopupper current ARIA spec - Allow more ARIA states & properties for
role=menuitem - Allow CSP
prefetch-srcdirective (updated to Salvation 2.4.0) - Disallow all character encodings other than UTF-8
- Disallow
script[charset] - Disallow nested interactive ARIA roles
- Disallow the
dropzoneattribute - Disallow the
menuitemelement - Fix bug that caused the checker to incorrectly treat
input[type]values case-sensitively when doing particular checks
07 October 2017
- Fix bug that made the vnu.jar
--Werroroption not work as expected - Make vnu.jar exit 0 if all errors have been filtered out
06 October 2017
- Allow DPUB roles on more elements (per ARIA in HTML spec updates)
- Add
--Werroroption to the vnu.jar command-line checker. The option causes the checker to exit non-zero if any warnings are encountered (even if there are no errors). - Fix mismatch that caused message-filtering failures
- Fix memory leak in language detector (patch from @tgyurci)
- Stop reporting HTML4-specific parse errors for HTML4-doctype docs
20 August 2017
- Allow
script[nomodule] - Allow
hover,any-hover,pointer, andany-pointermedia features - Allow
@scope,@updateviacache,@workertypeforlink[rel=serviceworker] - Allow
&;(don’t report it as “&did not start a character reference”) - Add
acceptlanguagequery parameter, to specify an Accept-Language request-header value for checker to send when fetching remote documents - Update CSP checking to Salvation 2.3.0 https://github.com/shapesecurity/salvation/releases/tag/v2.3.0
26 June 2017
- Add new major feature to filter out (drop/ignore/suppress) errors/warnings by regex. See https://github.com/validator/validator/wiki/Message-filtering
- Replace a case of “Attribute "foo" not allowed on element "param" in this context” wording in error message with “Attribute "foo" not allowed on element "param" at this point” (for consistent working for that error between the command-line checker and the web-based checker).
- Disallow the
contextmenuattribute andtype=contextmenuandtype=toolbarfor themenuelement. - Allow
link[rel=serviceworker] - Allow floating-point numbers in attribute values to start with decimal point
- Allow
a[href]in SVG wherevera[xlink:href]is allowed - Allow the
focusableandtabindexattributes on SVG elements - Fix bug that disallowed
progress&meteraslabel[for]targets - Default to text/html for checking file uploads
- Emit warnings for use of
rel={copyright,previous} - Prevent Bulgarian ➡ Russian misidentifications in language detector
- Skip figcaption elements when running the language detector
26 March 2017
- Allow
colorattribute withlink[rel="mask-icon"] - Allow
meta[name]to haveitemref/itemscope/itemtype/itemid - Allow
allow-top-navigation-by-user-activationiniframe[sandbox] - Stop hiding “sectioning roots” headings in “Heading-level outline”
- Change error for
role=nonewithimg[alt=""]to warning - Fix from @xfq for longstanding bug in “Show source” behavior in Web UI
- Fix from @xfq for controlling some runtime params for HTTP behavior
- Fix from @zcorpan to drop unneeded warning for
<menu type=toolbar> - Make “Corrupt GZIP trailer” a non-error
- Add
--asciiquotesoption to vnu.jar command-line checker - Skip lang detection of elements w/ lang attributes not matching
html[lang] - Drop Bulgarian lang detection, to prevent Russian misidentification
- Update Estonian/Catalan lang profiles, to prevent Russian misidentification
- Update ICU4J to 58.2
06 February 2017
- Fix bug in language detector that when running the vnu.jar command-line checker on a list of documents caused it to sometimes misidentify the language of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., documents. The bug also caused the memory used by the checker to increase as the number of documents checked at the same time increased, and caused performance to degrade.
- Allow
aria-requiredattribute everywhererequiredattribute is allowed - Add
--exit-zero-alwaysoption to vnu.jar command-line checker - Fix longstanding bug around code for identifying overlapping cells in table-integrity checker (the bug somewhat frequently gets hit when checking Wikipedia pages but otherwise in the wild gets hit only extremely rarely)
30 January 2017
- Fix bug that broke vnu.jar command-line checking of URLs
- Fix bug in
rel="shortcut icon"checking - Add
nu.client.EmbeddedValidatorfor use as library by other Java apps - Disallow
tfootbeforetbody
15 January 2017 This release adds the following changes to the vnu.jar command-line checker that had already been made available in the Web-based checker in the 17.0.1 release.
- Allow custom elements (names containing “-”; e.g.,
<foo-bar>) - Allow anything in
templateelement subtrees (exclude from checking)
08 January 2017
- New language-detection feature; warns for missing/wrong
html[lang] - New option
--no-langdetectforvnu.jardisables language detection - Allow custom elements (names containing “-”; e.g.,
<foo-bar>) - Allow the
isattribute (for custom elements) - Allow ARIA 1.1 roles/states/properties
- Warn for viewport values that restrict resizing
- Allow
divindl, to groupdt+ddsets - Allow anything in
templateelement subtrees (exclude from checking) - Allow
link[rel=preload]in body - Disallow
sizesattribute on non-iconlink - Allow
<link rel=apple-touch-icon sizes=…> - Allow comments before doctype (warning dropped)
- Allow
<video playsinline> - Allow
<iframe allowusermedia> - Warn for
sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin" - New option to check error pages (404s and other non-200 responses)
- Allow
link[nonce] - Disallow
input[datetime] - Disallow
mediagroupattribute - Allow
menu[type=popup], disallowmenu[type=context] - Disallow non-http/https URLs in
a[ping] - Allow
referrerpolicyattribute - Warn for
html[manifest](obsolete) - Disallow
keygen(obsolete) - Warn for
about:legacy-compatin doctype - Align SVG+ARIA checking with ARIA requirements in current SVG spec
- Allow
h1-h6&hgroupinlegend - Ignore SSL errors when checking remote documents
- Allow
script[type=module](supported in Edge but not in other UAs yet) - Disallow content in
iframe(must be empty) - Make
vnu.jarcheck.xhtmlfiles using XML-specific RelaxNG grammar - Allow
th[abbr] - Allow any value in SVG
classattribute (not just XML-compatible names) - Disallow HTML4/XHTML1 Transitional doctype
- Allow CSP
require-sri-fordirective (updated to Salvation 2.2.0) - Allow any element or text as content of SVG
desc - Allow SVG
vector-effect=non-scaling-stroke - Allow only text in
rp - Disallow multiple
meta[name=description] - Disallow URLs with port values greater than 65535
- Disallow
<input name=isindex> - Disallow empty
autocompleteattribute
29 June 2016
- JSON/gnu message formats updated to ensure doc URL is always included
<!-->(IE conditional comment end) is now (again) a non-error<template>contents are now hidden from outline views
20 June 2016
- fixes problem that made the release jars unusable with Scala
sbt test - adds “Heading-level outline” in Web UI; shows simple h1-h6 hierarchy
18 June 2016
- link[rel=stylesheet] in body now non-error (body-OK)
- rel=dns-prefetch|preconnect|prefetch|preload|prerender non-error+body-OK
- style[scoped] now error
- iframe[seamless] now error
--(consecutive hyphens) within a comment now non-error- new specific error for
--!>at end of a comment - new specific error for
<!--within a comment - multiple meta[charset] now error
autocompletechecking now aligned with current spec- label[form] now error
- a|area[rel=noopener] now non-error
- allow-presentation/allow-orientation-lock in iframe[sandbox] non-error
- label-less empty option now non-error if datalist child
- section[role=navigation|complementary|banner] now non-error
3 March 2016
- Made
minlengtha non-error forinput[type=password]/input[type=text] - Made multiple values in
integritya non-error - Made
<time>with element children an error if nodatetimespecified - Improved CSP checking (now using Salvation 2.0.1)
- [WebUI] Dropped “Using the schema…”/“The Content-Type was…” Info msgs
- [WebUI] Added some autofocus of URL field and Message Filtering button
- [WebUI] Footer now tells whether document was served w/ charset param
- [WebUI] Fixed bug/regression in Image Report image display
- [build] Fixed bug caused by Rhino team building their jar with Java6
- [build] Fixed some problems with running build script on Windows
- [build] Made build script work with Python 3 (not just Python 2)
1 January 2016
- Java8 is now required to run the checker (and to build it).
- Made the
<meta http-equiv=content-security-policy content="...">element a non-error & added syntax checking of itscontentattribute and checking of the value of the Content-Security-Policy HTTP header. - Made the Content Security Policy
nonceattribute a non-error. - Aligned
on*event-handler-attribute checking with spec. - Aligned
iframe[sandbox]checking with spec. - Made
minlengthattribute a non-error. - Dropped “heading needed” warning for cases where
aria-labelfound. - Made unescaped ampersand a non-error in, e.g.
href="foo?bar=1&baz=2". - Added error for
img[alt=""]w/role!=presentation. - Made
role=switcha non-error. - Made
role=groupforheader&footera non-error. - Made
role=searchforforma non-error. - Made the Subresource Integrity
integrityattribute a non-error and added syntax checking for it. - Refined bad-URL error message to indicate which character is invalid.
- Refined Web UI "Message Filtering" to show total error/warning counts
- Refined Web UI to show green if there are 0 errors or warnings to show
- Fixed "
input[type=hidden]label descendants" bug (@takenspc patch) - Refined Web UI to remove background colors and increase font size
- Made a variety of refinements and fixes to ARIA role checking.
- Made
ol>li[role=menuitem]&ol>li[role=tab]non-errors. - Added warnings for use of ARIA roles with implicit-semantics elements.
- Made nesting of
timeelements a non-error. - Made checker ignore
input[type=hidden]label descendants in checks. - Improved errors for obsolete media types/features.
- Fixed bug in checking of the content model for the
rubyelement.
29 June 2015
- Added error messages for deprecated CSS media types/features.
- Changed checking of the
acceptattribute for input[type=file] to allow file extensions in the value (per spec). - Added error for documents that have multiple
autofocusattributes. - Made the
<rb>and<rtc>elements non-errors. - Made use of
data-*attributes for SVG & MathML elements non-errors. - Made use of HTML content in the SVG
<desc>,<title>, and<metadata>elements a non-error (per spec). - Changed error message for the
inputmodeattribute to a warning. - Fixed a bug that caused spurious error to be emitted for ID references
in
aria-controlsandaria-labelledbywith trailing whitespace. - Fixed a bug that prevented the command-line checker from being able to check URLs when run in a Windows environment. (patch from @mariusj)
- Added option to disable log4j when using Java API. (patch from @abrin)
12 April 2015
- Fixed regression that caused spurious errors for
input[type=email]. - Fixed regression in war caused by missing jar needed for gzip handling.
28 March 2015
- Renamed from “Nu HTML Checker” to “Nu Html Checker”.
- Improved error messages for
input[type]attribute mismatches. - Added support for checking
object[typemustmatch]per-spec. - Added error message for
titleelement that only has whitespace. - Dropped all
meta[name]checking. Any arbitrarymeta[name]value is now accepted unchecked. - Made a couple select/option error messages more precise.
- Added
useragentparameter, for allowing you to specify any arbitrary user-agent string for the checker to use when fetching remote documents. - Added option to limit maximum number of errors shown. Exposed thru
nu.validator.messages.limitJava system prop &--messages-limitoption for the build script. Controls limit on maximum number of messages the checker service will report for a single document before stopping with a “Too many messages” fatal error. - Make the API/CLI (command-line interface) emit source extracts &
“hilite” info. When you set the
--formatoption tojson,xml,xhtml, orhtml(but notgnuortext), the output now includes:- an extract from the doc source (
extractfield in JSON output) - which extract part to hilight (JSON
hiliteLength&hiliteStart) - error range starting line/column (JSON
firstColumn&firstLine)
- an extract from the doc source (
- Added full support for checking documents at SNI origins.
- Fixed regression that caused CLI/API to parse .xhtml docs as text/html instead of using the XML parser.
- Changed backend handling for the case when the “promiscuous-ssl” option is on (that is, when you’re requesting the doc-fetching backend ignore any SSL/TLS cert errors). This should be a transparent change.
- Now available from (Maven) Central Repository (nu.validator.validator).
- Made a number of look&feel refinements to the Web frontend.
- Replaced all Jena IRI code dependencies with dependency on galimatias.
- Updated doc-fetching backend to Apache HTTP Components HttpClient 4.4.
- Upgraded to Jetty 9.2.9 & upgraded many other build/run dependencies to latest versions; e.g., log4j 1.2.17, Apache Commons Codec 1.10.
- Dropped some dependencies that aren’t actually needed.
- Changed build to cut dependency download size from ~300MB down to ~16MB.
- Made change to force java to always use Saxon instead of Xalan.
- Renamed all org.whattf classes to nu.validator.
- Did large reorganization/consolidation of sources.
- Added
--javaversionoption, to generate class files targeted for particular VM versions (compiles for Java6/1.6 by default).
- added new "
sizesattr required whensrcsetspecifies width" check - added
--skip-non-htmloption to CLI; http://goo.gl/sKjRD5 This change alters the default CLI handling of non-HTML files. Before the CLI by default skipped any files without .html, .htm, .xhtml, or .xht extensions; instead now by default all files found are checked, regardless of extension. The--skip-non-htmloption provides the old default behavior: it make the checker skip any files without .html, .htm, .xhtml, or .xht extensions. - added
--javaversionoption to build script and changed default build behavior to now generate vnu.jar/vnu.war builds that can run in Java6 VMs (as well as in any newer VMs). To generate a vnu.jar/vnu.war build with a newer/different VM target, use, e.g.,--javaversion=1.8. - added
--stacksizeoption to build script & removed harcoded stack size - fixed several bugs in
sizeschecking - fixed position reporting of bad character refs in
title&textarea - fixed ARIA checking to allow
li[role=separator]&time[role=timer] - refined content-type check to treat
.csluploads as application/xml - refined "unexpected content-type" error msg to include URL of document
- refined a few things in TestRunner
- updated Rhino dependency to rhino1_7R5
- made SVG
<style>not require thetypeattribute - added initial (liberal) support for ARIA in SVG
- dropped error for
X-UA-Compatible: IE=EdgeHTTP header. Thx @zcorpan - dropped error for
meta[http-equiv=X-UA-Compatible][content=IE=Edge] - added version info to jar manifest file
- made nu.validator.client.TestRunner exit non-zero for test failures
- made build script explicitly request Python2. Thx @kurosawa-takeshi
- code cleanup to build script and some Java sources. Thx @cvrebert
- brought reporting of bad IDs in
formattr into compliance with spec (see validator/validator.github.io#8 and thanks again to https://github.com/cavweb20)
- fixed bug that broke json & xml message output (see validator/validator.github.io#5 and thanks to https://github.com/cavweb20)
- added support for the
<picture>element - improved ARIA support for various table elements
- made refinements to outline handling
- added experimental warnings for some heading/outline issues
- improved checking for
meta@nameandlink@relvalues - CLI now exits with
1if any errors are found - CLI no longer says
XHTML elementin error messages - switched to galimatias for URL checking
- updated to latest ICU4J
- release now includes WAR file
- initial
vnu.jarrelease