[thelist] HTML validators
Erika Meyer
erika at seastorm.com
Fri Sep 1 01:09:15 CDT 2000
It would help, to answer this better, if you gave the validator URLs.
I don't know the WDG validator or even who WDG is, though it has a
familiar ring....
By the way, I'm not sure why this message had an (off topic). Seems
like validators are on-topic. Anyway.
Here's my validator experience:
I tried a few. It started with one or two, but then I was hooked.
I'd sneak over to RxHTML for a quickie, then go to the W3C for the
hard stuff.
Sure, I got different results. In the early days, I'd run my code
thru multiple validators, mainly because I couldn't get the W3C
validator to give me happy results.
I wanted validation, not complaints.
Sometime over the course of events I discovered the DTD. The W3C
validator will validate according to your DTD. This can be helpful.
Do the browsers care about your DTD? The browsers do not. (I'm told
IE 5 Mac does, but I'm not really savvy about that). Anyways, a DTD
helps with your W3C code validation, which is reason enough.
If you don't have a <doctype> the W3C validator will validate to HTML
4 strict, and this can be painful. Try transitional.
Which is most reliable/authoritative/up-to-date?
The W3C validator.
Some list members also use Bobby.
How much stock to place in a validator? If you use CSS, I'd use the
W3C HTML validator and the W3C CSS validator and put a great deal of
stock in it. You still end up making educated decisions about when
to allow invalid code because you have to have a certain effect that
doesn't really work any other way.
Eventually the issues become: browsers vs. code. future vs. past.
portable vs. perfect.
Stuff like that.
Erika
>Hey all,
>
>I've been experimenting with some HTML validators online,
>notably the w3c.org validator, and the WDG validator. These things
>seem to be giving me conflicting and/or questionable results, as well
>as neurosis and a head-ache, and I wondered;
>
>1) how much stock to place on them
>2) whether list members use them
>3) which validators you'd consider to be the most
> reliable/authoritative/up-to-date
>4) whether and when DTD declarations are really needed
>
>thanks in advance,
>
>Duncan O'Neill
erika at seastorm.com
http://www.seastorm.com
More information about the thelist
mailing list