Beside the lack of web standards attention, I had another problem with the Flickr badge: with Javascript disabled I ended up with a rectangular empty div, 76px height, just sitting there..

I looked around on Google for a solution, at first I thought I could check if Javascript was enabled with php. It turns out that it's pretty easy to check if the browser has Javascript abilities but not if it's actually enabled. I know that php is a server side language and Javascript mostly client side, so it's not possible to call a php function from a Javascript script (except maybe using XMLHttpRequest but I did't even go there).

After trying various unsuccessful combinations I finally figured it out and I wrote the php function so that it writes what I need using Javascript:

<?php
function flickr(){
echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n";
echo "document.write('<div id=\"photos_wrapper\">');\n";
echo "document.write('<div id=\"photos\">');\n";
echo "</script>\n";
echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"http://www.flickr.com/badge_code_v2.gne?....."></script>\n";
echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n";
echo "document.write('</div>');\n";
echo "document.write('</div>');\n";
echo "</script>\n";
}
?>

Now, if Javascript is enabled, all is good, otherwise just no empty divs and no flickr badge...I thought... but NO, now it doesn't validate because since there are three <script> “blocks” the parser sees an opening and ending mismatch of the divs ..So, I'm back where I started. More when I fix it..