Modx vesion 0.9.6

I am trying to identify a suitable CMS for my organisation.
I have installed and tried most of the other CMS (open source and commercial) and for the past couple of days I am trying Modx.
I have the following problems ( most likely due to my own ignorance)
I used the the demo site that comes packaged with the installation and came up against the following issues These may not be bugs but I am just looking for guidance.
1. The demo site as it is does not validate (XHTML and CSS)
2. The search (Ajax?) worked only once and after that it it stopped working
3. the links to validate XHTML etc do not work

I just want to know if these could besome bugs in the demo site.
Can my website team develop a validated site easily with ModX?
should I look for an earlier or adevelopment version?

Hi indeman,

Welcome to MODx .

Here are my responses to your queries:

1. DEMO site is hosted by a 3rd party, and 100s of users use that site to demonstrate the software, they can change the things as well, so 100% compliance can not be guarenteed on the demo site, however this doesn’t mean that you can’t build 100% valid xhtml/css sites, and its really very easy to do.

2. Same as above, I am sure someone changed something. If you want to have exact overview, the best is to install on your server and play with it.

3. same here as well .

To sum up, these are not bugs in the MODx, and you can build 100% valid xhtml/css sites without any problems. You can download the lastest version here: http://modxcms.com/download.html

I have installed, added content, and tried working for over 20 hours. I found the same problems on my installation as well.

If you can create a static XHTML/CSS mockup that validates, you can automate it with MODx without adding any extra cruft.

Ok I will let a designer create a great valid design later. i have to demonstrate in 24 hours to my team that ModX is a better solution and validation concerns are uppermost in peoples minds.

For now, using the demo template (ModXhost) I have solved one validation issue (12 errors relating to &&) by using an untested patch I found in a bug post about the same issue.

The other XHTML validation issue remains (2 errors on something about "quickedit:content" ). I will appreciate any
help solutions to that.

The other major validation concern is the CSS validation which throws up the following errors on the demo ModXhost template.

URI : /assets/templates/modxhost/layout.css
25 #wrapper Property _height doesn’t exist : 82px
188 #content p Property _line-height doesn’t exist : 16px
213 .FSF_searchResults Property _line-height doesn’t exist : 16px
221 .FSF_extract Property _line-height doesn’t exist : 16px
233 .FSF_extract Property _line-height doesn’t exist : 16px
242 .highlight Property _line-height doesn’t exist : 16px

URI : /assets/templates/modxhost/form.css
9 #search Property _margin-top doesn’t exist : 42px
109 #ajaxSearch_submit Value Error : cursor hand is not a cursor value : hand
118 #ajaxSearch_output Property -moz-opacity doesn’t exist : 0.95
119 #ajaxSearch_output Property opacity doesn’t exist : 0.95
120 #ajaxSearch_output Parse Error - opacity=95) !important

URI : /
251 Property opacity doesn’t exist : 0

I guess some of these are due to the ajaxsearch that doesn’t work anyway.
I am searching for solutions for that as well.

Here is the thing about validating : it’s a great goal to have but sometimes you have to complete a balancing act between what you need to achieve in terms of design, time available, browser compatibility with the strict validation.

Of course most of the times you should avoid hacks (example : the underscore hack used above) to ensure all browser render OK. For instance the moz properties are proprietary thus not standard compliant, the proper opacity property is not understood properly by IE for instance and this forces you to use hacks or improper syntax if you want rendering to be consistent... there are other examples.

I am not sure full validation was a *strict* priority when building MODxHost template. Nor should it be, in my opinion. Standards are base guidelines, which of course you should follow but I think it should never supersede improving the user experience or making sure rendering is consistent. In a way, as we say in french, stick to the spirit, not the letter of the law

But others will have different opinion Maybe I am just too lazy to take the time to make all things fit, or I am not paid enough to take the time to do it
I’d be curious to know what my fellow MODxer will say about that...

Anyway, let me help the good cause by adding a resource : This page is a treasure of errors or reason why validation can fail (The underscore hack is explained in 10.) If you can build a 100% validating variant of the MODxHost template, well, that’s great !

But remember MODx is not responsible for non-validating templates : you (or the people who build the template) are. MODx is great for designers because it doesn’t strap you into a design pattern, but also because it doesn’t output some badly hardcoded HTML into your templates like some other CMS do (I won’t throw names here ).

As for the [tt]<quickedit:content />[/tt] issue, it can be fixed you don’t *have* to use those tags just prepend your TVs with # (write [tt][*#content*][/tt] in your template instead)
As for AjaxSearch : I have no answer right away.

If you want a 100% validating CSS file, just remove all of those offending styles. All of them are designed for cross-browser compatibility, but I don’t see anything there that is so essential that you couldn’t live without it. All the underscore styles are designed to make IE 5/6 display things the same as other browsers, so you can either not care about the slightly different rendering in IE 5/6 or add a conditional comment that includes those styles (without the underscores) for only IE lte 6.

And as David says, QuickEdit can be set up to use different blocks of code, so read the QE documentation if you need more help getting that the way you want it (or just disable the QuickEdit plugin and module if you don’t need it).

Not having a hand cursor or 95% opacity in your AjaxSearch styles is also not a show-stopper in my book...

Thanks people for sparing all the time.
Ajax Search, Reflect and Quickedit were creating (or perhaps the modx host template was) the validation errors.
1. Ajax Search worked in Firefox (without the Ajaxiness) but not in IE6 and 7.I think there is an alternative search snippet . I will look for it. I can do without the fancy display of search results anyway.

2. Quick edit looks good to the users who are afraid of logging in to the manager or mark up text. will keep it and will try to work around the validation.

3. I upgraded Ditto and reflect to the beta version and Reflect seems to be causing a couple of errors.. have to figure out the styles I guess .

4. there are other small issues with adding users, friendly URLs and localisation (My country computes in a minimum of 8 languages and wites and speaks many more, I wish to have my site in a minimum of 5 of these languages ultimately)

5.Validation may not be important to people focussed on design and development, but to the uninitiated, validation and SEO seems to be very important, the very reason why I moved away from the bloatware.

Overall I feel that ModX is the way to go for us and I still have a slight apprehension if we could find the right people to maintain the website and keep upgrading and tweaking .

I do not have any knowledge or experience about these things. I learned a lot by evaluating different CMS and finally decided on Modx. With Modx, but I could install and build a site (without designing the template of course) in about 25 hours of learning and trying.(This included formatting and uploading about 2 MB of text documents and a bit of graphics ) I have a rough menu structure and have to now move the content around, add the comment ... and show a complete working site and CMS backend. to my colleagues . wish me luck.

Though I am not knowledgeable , I wish to make a suggestion to the developers of Modx. The reason that brings people like me to ModX is the public opinion about the Valid output and SEO . and with that reputation, I expected that the demo pages and related snippets nstuff ( third party or otherwise) would at a minimum enable valid HTML & CSS. Perhaps when the next version is due I will have a team of people by then who can volunter to test these things extensively and package document ModX better.

Just a thought about validation:

Why would you care about validation while logged into the manager and editing sites? That’s simply a red herring that has no real-world implications in my book. The W3C Validator will never be logged into your manager and having QuickEdit in the way in the real world...

Just a thought about validation:

Why would you care about validation while logged into the manager and editing sites?

no I was only validating the public pages outside the manager.