& or &, this is question

[son]

I just validated some web pages and saw the following error:character "&" is the first character of a delimiter but occurred as dataDo I really need to replace & with &? What if user who will be using the character using this also on website? Do I have to worry about this?Thanks,Son

[Ingolme]

& is the correct way. If you have user input on your site, it's your business to make sure that the text gets translated to proper HTML. With htmlspecialchars(), for example, if your user input is processed by PHP.

[son]

& is the correct way. If you have user input on your site, it's your business to make sure that the text gets translated to proper HTML. With htmlspecialchars(), for example, if your user input is processed by PHP.

Thanks Ingolme. I suppose this applies to any html element, including meta and title tags? Also, do normal CMS systems that are on the market do the same you think? Just wonder how commercial software might deal with this (I am always keen to learn things in proper way if you know what I mean)...Son

[Fmdpa]

Yup, this is the proper way to do it for all elements. Most CMS systems probably use a function to encode the characters in displayed data: maybe PHP's htmlspecialchars(), as Ingolme mentioned.

[son]

Yup, this is the proper way to do it for all elements. Most CMS systems probably use a function to encode the characters in displayed data: maybe PHP's htmlspecialchars(), as Ingolme mentioned.

Cheers...Son