This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Validating Your Web Content
In Hour 2, I discussed ways to test your pages; one very important way to test your pages is to validate them. Think of it this way: it's one thing to design and draw a beautiful set of house plans, but it's quite another for an architect to stamp it as a safe structure suitable for construction. Validating your web pages is a similar process; in this case, however, the architect is an application—not a person.
In brief, validation is the process of testing your pages with a special application that searches for errors and makes sure your pages follow the strict XHTML standard. Validation is simple. In fact, the standards body responsible for developing web standards—the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—offers an online validation tool you can use. To validate a page, follow this URL: http://validator.w3.org/. The W3C Markup Validation Service is shown in Figure 3.4.
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Figure 3.4 The W3C Markup Validation Service allows you to validate an HTML (XHTML) document to ensure it has been coded accurately.
If you've already published a page online, you can use the Validate by URI tab. Use the Validate by File Upload tab to validate files stored on your local computer file system. The Validate by Direct Input tab allows you to paste the contents of a file from your text editor. If all goes well, your page will get a passing report (see Figure 3.5).
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Figure 3.5 If a page passes the W3C Markup Validation Service, you know it is ready for prime time.
If the W3C Markup Validation Service encounters an error in your web page, it will provide specific details (including the line numbers of the offending code). This is a great way to hunt down problems and rid your pages of buggy code. Validation not only informs you whether your pages are constructed properly, it also assists you in finding and fixing problems before you post pages for the world to see.