[thelist] HTML validators(off topic)

[Jorah Lavin]

At 11:05 AM 9/1/00 +1200, Duncan O'Neill wrote:

>1) how much stock to place on them

Much.

>2) whether list members use them

On EVERY project, but not every page... I generally will test each major 
template of a project until error-free, then rely on the error-checker 
built into my editor for page-by-page checking, going to the online 
validator only if I have questions.  I find this method particularly 
helpful with my CSS.

>3) which validators you'd consider to be the most
>    reliable/authoritative/up-to-date

I don't know, and admit to an almost religious reliance on the w3 validator 
combined with the error checkers in BBEdit and HomeSite.

>4) whether and when DTD declarations are really needed

Yes, and Always.  (But I'm admittedly compulsive and obsessive about my 
HTML) I think that this is an extremely easy item to add, and will provide 
a lot of value as we move toward the day when content is served regularly 
to a wide variety of User Agents.

-Jorah

PS:  Not every page I do is error free.  But with luck, any errors are ones 
which I've noted and made a decision not to worry about or which I've 
accepted as a trade-off for some other benefit... for instance, I usually 
validate to (iirc) 4.01 Transitional rather than Strict, since I still use 
some of the "depreciated" tags.