I have a blog(wordpress based). And try to validate by w3c validator one of my page. The first error is:
Line 1, Column 1: Non-space characters found without seeing a doctype first. Expected <!DOCTYPE html>.
<!DOCTYPE html><!-- HTML 5 -->
Also, DebugBar (http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage) agree and show two invisible chars before <!
when I open the same page from “HTML Check” tab inside this tool. BUT!!
- This line of HTML-code come from file header.php in my wordpress theme.
- I download this file from my hoster to my local HDD.
- The first line of header.php is
<!DOCTYPE html><!-- HTML 5 -->
- When I open header.php in RJ TextEd (just advanced text editor) it say: current encoding for header.php is UFT-8 without(!) BOM.
- When I open header.php in HEX-viewer I see, that byte 0 and 1 is 3c,21 – so it is exactly
<!
.
So, all things considered, why & where I get these “odd symbols” from?
I found the root of problem. The general rule is:
In my case I have total 1.3K files that make up my site. Only 4 files was BOMed:
And I was forced to re-save every and all of these 4 files as “UFT-8 without BOM” to get rid of “Non-space characters” validation error. When I did this (re-save files) – error is gone.