Thesis. How to cope with incorrect html

Thesis

"How to cope with incorrect HTML" was the title of my Cand. Scient (Masters Equivalent) thesis in computer science.

Among others, it deals with how one can parse valid and invalid HTML and also contains the only major validation effort on the web to my knowledge (2.4 million html documents validated). The results of this validation are very interesting. The thesis is available in the following formats:

• Page by page view (.jpg). This is still a bit work in progress, but it works very well at moment. Also available as one zip file with all images[19MB]. Below I've added some quick links to the different chapters:
  • -Introduction: An overview of the thesis
  • -HTML: A walkthrough of the history of HTML and how the HTML standard is defined
  • -Parsing valid HTML: Defines an algorithm for parsing valid HTML including some java code
  • -Invalid HTML: What types of HTML errors exist and how can we build a browser to handle them in an organized manner
  • -Statistics on syntactical HTML errors on the Internet: The first major validation effort of HTML pages on the internet with 2.5 million pages attempted validated. The results show that only 0.7% of all web pages on the internet are valid according to the HTML standards
  • -Regression testing of the IceStorm Browser: Describes a framework that was implemented for regression testing of an existing java browser.
• How to cope with invalid HTML"[ps]. This format is very much recommended for printing.Use gsview to view postscript files.
• Also see my ongoing efforts to convert the latex source to wiki text

The thesis has also been referenced in quite a few articles on the internet. Note: quite a few of these list the percentage of valid pages incorrectly. The correct answer is 0.71%, not 0.007 (which is the fraction). Here is a listing of the ones I've seen so far:

• Original usenet posting to comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html from myself. Posted a year after the thesis had been published
• Posting to list.w3c.org (not by me :) )
• Benmeadowcroft.com blog entry was probably one of the first to pick it up. Another blog post on his sites explains how he discovered the thesis and how it has spread afterwards. Also, yet another post exists with extract from some email exchange I had with the author
• Jeffrey Zeldman: brief notice. This is a relatively high-profile web design site
• Goer.org: I think we all can be proud blog entry about the thesis and comparisson with own smaller tests
• NetMechanic: Why Valid Code Matters
• Virtuelvis: HTML validity factor: 0.07 (should have been HTML validity factor: 0.007)
• A Swedish pro-validation website
• An Indonesian website which has my name on it. Can't really understand much of the content though, anyone got an Indonesian->English online translator?
• Caslon: Minor reference to thesis
• 7nights: Random Acts of validation. Someone made a comment refering to the thesis