Validation Tips

On this page:

Why validation?
Tips
Validation topics
Elsewhere

Let's assume you want other people than just yourself to look at your web pages. If you landed on this page, that's probably a reasonable assumption.

Maybe you just have a page for friends and family. But you don't want them to call you because they can't see the latest pictures of the baby. Maybe the page is for fellow students, but you don't want to hear you can't spell (even if that's true); and if half of them use Macs, it'd better be readable on those machines, not just on your own familiar WinTel box. Maybe it's a business page and you have to make sure that if a businessman has the page read out to him by a phone service on his way to the airport, the text of your page doesn't become all garbled - it has to make sense even if spoken and not seen.

Put differently, you'd better make sure your pages are fit for their purpose and usable by the intended audience. Validation programs can help with that by pointing out problems and potential problems. You still have to provide or present the actual content but validation can help to ensure that your coding or spelling errors don't get in the way of that content.

This section of HomeSite Help will give you information and tips about validation. And I won't limit myself to HomeSite and its companion program CSE HTML Validator, because there's more to validation than that capable pair can handle. As gently suggested above, there are different types of validation and different ways of getting some ensurance that at least there's nothing wrong with your code. However silly your content may be. ;^)

I'll start this section with two pages, but this will probably grow gradually as more subjects come up. You may also suggest validation topics to me. Just keep in mind please that this site is done completely in whatever free time I have (not much). No promises. But I'll certainly consider what you come up with.

This section consists of the following topics:

Validation & Validation Updated

An overview of different types of validation, what types of tools there are for them, and how HomeSite fits into the scheme of things. And why it may not be enough. With short reviews of a number of products and services.

Tougher validation

As it comes out of its electronic box, CSE HTML Validator may be too gentle. It will happily check the syntax of nearly every known browser-specific extension. Maybe you don't want browser-specific extensions but you don't know all of them. Here's how to make CSE tougher so it won't allow that.

Of course more people write about validation and related stuff. Here's a small collection of links with good information about the why and how of validation, and some basic concepts like SGML and DTD.

The WDVL HTML Validation

This section of The Web Developer's Virtual Library gives a good explanation and background information about validation. You'll find a short explanation of what DTD's are, and what the three latest types for HTML 4.0 look like. There are also links to various validation resources.

HTML Resources: Validation

A nicely organized collection of links at the Resources section of the HTML Writers Guild. But check the Validation & Validation page first!

A Gentle Introduction to SGML

A nice introduction that does a lot more than explaining cryptic abbreviations like SGML and DTD. This will also help you understand what a DOCTYPE is and why a DOCTYPE declaration in your web page source is necessary for validation; it will also help you to read the HTML 4.0 specification from the World Wide Web Consortium that comes with HomeSite (you'll find it in the W3C HTML 4.0 folder under the Help folder). Don't worry if you don't understand it all in one go, it will gradually sink in. It took me a while to learn to read the specifications. But it's useful knowledge if you want to write correct HTML.