HTML Validator giving me error on form input type, element not allowed in context

Question

This is the code I have that HTML Validator is giving me an error on:

<input type="text" id="search" name="keywords" /> <input type="submit" value="Search" name="Submit" />

Here is a screen shot of error in HTML Validator: http://i39.tinypic.com/mw2m92.png

This is the error message I am receiving:

The mentioned element is not allowed to appear in the context in which you've placed it; the other mentioned elements are the only ones that are both allowed there and can contain the element mentioned. This might mean that you need a containing element, or possibly that you've forgotten to close a previous element.

There are 2 types of elements in the body of a HTML file, inline and block elements. One possible cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a block-level element (such as "<p>" or "<table>") inside an inline element (such as "<a>", "<span>", or "<font>").

In the following sample, the <font> tag is an inline tag which can only contain other inline tags. But the <p> tag is a block tag. So a <p> tag can not be contained in a <font> tag.

This is the block of html that it is from:

<li>
    <form method="post" action="http://site.com/"  >
    <div class='hiddenFields'>
     <input type="hidden" name="ACT" value="19" />
     <input type="hidden" name="XID" value="90ee0994104d8ba87b6ef9b43e998fc8c89e0d9f" />
     <input type="hidden" name="RP" value="search/results" />
     <input type="hidden" name="NRP" value="" />
     <input type="hidden" name="RES" value="" />
     <input type="hidden" name="status" value="" />
     <input type="hidden" name="weblog" value="forms|alumni_distinguished|housing_faq|international_faq" />
     <input type="hidden" name="search_in" value="everywhere" />
     <input type="hidden" name="where" value="all" />
     <input type="hidden" name="site_id" value="1" />
    </div>

    <input type="text" id="search" name="keywords" /> <input type="submit" value="Search" name="Submit" />
    </form>
</li>

Answer 1

I believe the problem is that the inputs are in a <li> element, which by default is not a block-level element. This is usually the cause of such 'out-of-context' errors. It won't hurt your page at all, but just keep it from validating.

Answer 2

You haven't mentioned which HTML verion this validator validates against. Assuming that it is not XTHML, The input tag is not to be closed. The use of the "/>" implies that you are supplying a closing tag.

For more information : Reference

However, this restriction would not hold for XHTML which requires that all tags be closed. (or maybe I should say that the restriction that all tags should be closed applies only in XHTML) ;-)

Answer 3

Are you using HTML or XHTML

In HTML the <input> tag has no end tag.

In XHTML the <input> tag must be properly closed.

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_input.asp

Answer 4

Is there an unclosed inline element before the code you supplied? List of inline elements: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/inline.html (for html4)

Answer 5

In HTML4 / XHTML1, you can't put inline content directly into a form element. HTML5, on the other hand, lifts that requirement.

Thus, if the validation error bothers you (there are worse things...), add a p or div element around the last two inputs.

Answer 6

eg. [code]

[/code]

wrap the input tag within a

tag

and be sure to self close the input tag like above.

This should validate.

Mark