How important is validation?

[Scott Meyers]

I have a web site that, due to maintenance by several people, some of whom are
fairly clueless about HTML and CSS, etc. (notably me), has gotten to the point
where I'm pretty sure it's suffering from bit rot. Though the pages seem to
display okay under IE and FF, I really think it's time for an under-the-hood
cleaning. I recently received a copy of Molly Holzschlag's "Spring Into HTML
and CSS," and in the first chapter, she makes a big deal of producing pages
that validate cleanly. However, she doesn't explain why this is important,
e.g., doesn't say what the consequences of validation failure are.

I went to http://validator.w3.org/ and was unsurprised to see my home page
fail to validate. But then I got to playing around, and I found that the home
pages for none of the following validate, either: yahoo, ebay, google, artima,
and cnn. This makes me wonder whether validation is really something I need
to worry about. Morally, I'm all for standards, and given a choice between
pages that validate and those that do not, I'd choose validation, but I'm
going to have to find somebody else to do the work for me (somebody who DOES
know about HTML and CSS, etc.), and I'm worried that finding somebody who is
familiar with validation is going to be a lot harder and/or more expensive
than finding somebody who is not.

Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
pages validate are? Also, I'm open to suggestions on who to consider hiring
to do the work at my site (which happens to be aristeia.com).

Thanks,

Scott

[Adrienne]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Scott Meyers <Us****@aristei a.com>
writing in news:MP******** *************** *@news.hevanet. com:

Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of
having pages validate are?

In the old days, before browsers did so much error correction, writing
valid code was important, because browsers would not render invalid
markup. For example, a missing </td> would make Netscape give a blank
page.

Now browsers do a lot of error correction, especially IE. Maybe one of
the reasons IE is so behind all the others is because there was so much
put in to do error correction. However, some browsers, if served
application text/xhtml+xml and the markup is not well formed, will
partially display with an error message.

For me it is a tool to discover why something is not rendering the way I
think it should. It is also a matter of pride, everything I produce is
valid. That might be because on new documents, I start with a strict
DOCType, and no presentational markup.

With that said, I have found that using valid, sematically correct,
presentationall ess markup has made me and my clients get very good SERPs,
without resorting to any trickery.... <Mafia music>and now that I have
told you my secret, I'm going to have to kill you. ;-)</music>

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Brian]

Scott Meyers wrote:

I recently received a copy of Molly Holzschlag's "Spring Into HTML
and CSS," and in the first chapter, she makes a big deal of producing
pages that validate cleanly. However, she doesn't explain why this
is important, e.g., doesn't say what the consequences of validation
failure are.
Error correction. If your documents validate, the onus is on the browser
to do the right thing. If they don't, then they'll guess at what you
meant. How well they'll guess is, erm, anyone's guess. :-D (Apologies
for the corny joke.)
then I got to playing around, and I found that the home pages for
none of the following validate, either: yahoo, ebay, google, artima,
and cnn.
Most pages don't. In the case of Yahoo, CNN, et. al., they likely have
substantial budgets for coders and testing. Do you?
This makes me wonder whether validation is really something I need to
worry about.
It is if you want durable www documents.
Morally, I'm all for standards,
Morals have nothing to do with it. Practically, validation is a useful tool.

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/validation.html
Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of
having pages validate are?

I already did. Perhaps I could encourage you to consider the advantages
of googling the group archives? ;-)

--
Brian

[Barbara de Zoete]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 11:59:44 -0700, Scott Meyers <Us****@aristei a.com> wrote:

I recently received a copy of Molly Holzschlag's "Spring Into HTML
and CSS," and in the first chapter, she makes a big deal of producing pages
that validate cleanly. However, she doesn't explain why this is important,
e.g., doesn't say what the consequences of validation failure are.

I went to http://validator.w3.org/ and was unsurprised to see my home page
fail to validate.
<http://aristeia.com/> Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
pages validate are?

Practical advantages of creating valid pages are, to me:
- all those who work on the pages work with the same standards and can take over
from each other with ease (assuming they are up to working with standards, that
is :-) );
- one knows for sure it is not an error in the code that is the cause of that
unwanted <*$+@@ &££@!!> rendering effect :-) ;
- years from now you as the author will still understand what you did when you
read back the code;
- I'm pretty sure valid code is a better garantee of getting your content across
the world wide web with its wide variaty of browsers (like text- and aural
browsers or screen readers, besides the more usual graphical ones), then is
invalid code, although to be really sure, one should also provide valid code
that is logical, has some semantics to it;
- I expect that valid code will not only work in the browsers of the present,
but will still work fine in browsers to come.

--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

[Barbara de Zoete]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:02:22 GMT, Adrienne <ar********@sbc global.net> wrote:

With that said, I have found that using valid, sematically correct,
presentationall ess markup has made me and my clients get very good SERPs,
without resorting to any trickery....
Ah, yes. That too of course.
<Mafia music>and now that I have
told you my secret, I'm going to have to kill you. ;-)</music>

lol

--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

[Spartanicus]

Scott Meyers <Us****@aristei a.com> wrote:

Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
pages validate are?
How long is a bit of string?
aristeia.com

It's funny that you are a C++ specialist, normally programmers are
sticklers for correct syntax.

There are more pressing issues than validation that should be solved
first, such as:

1) If you specify one colour you need to specify them all. Currently my
default link colour is used, but legibility is very poor against the
green of the navigation section of your site.
2) Your frames cause problems, users cannot bookmark specific views,
search engine indexing is poor, orphaned pages (pages without a nav
section) to name a few.
3) Your documents contain very little if any structure, you should use
headings.
4) Some of your links attempt to open a new window/tab, this is really
bad form since it forces your preferences onto people who do *not* want
new windows/tabs to be opened.

--
Spartanicus

[Nick Theodorakis]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:02:22 GMT, Adrienne <ar********@sbc global.net>
wrote:

[...]

In the old days, before browsers did so much error correction, writing
valid code was important, because browsers would not render invalid
markup. For example, a missing </td> would make Netscape give a blank
page.

Validation wouldn't have helped in that case anyway, since the closing
</td> is optional ;-)

Nick

--
Nick Theodorakis
ni************* *@hotmail.com
contact form:
http://theodorakis.net/contact.html

[Andy Dingley]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 11:59:44 -0700, Scott Meyers <Us****@aristei a.com>
wrote:

Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
pages validate are?

Simplicity. "Valid" is a simple and objective status. "Invalid" may or
may not work - there is (very much so!) invalidity and invalidity. An
empty <div> will cause Tidy to whine, the _presence_ (yes, presence!) of
a title attribute will cause Dreamweaver to complain. You can have HTML
documents that have minor invalidities no browser will really fall over,
or they might be major things (like an unclosed <table>) that really do
blow things out of the water. Unless you're obsessive about keeping up
to date on browser foibles, it's impossible to really know how bad an
invalidity's effects will be.

But if you're valid, you're valid. No arguments about it (except of
course on Usenet)

[Scott Meyers]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:15:37 GMT, Brian wrote:

then I got to playing around, and I found that the home pages for
none of the following validate, either: yahoo, ebay, google, artima,
and cnn.

Most pages don't. In the case of Yahoo, CNN, et. al., they likely have
substantial budgets for coders and testing. Do you?

I'm not sure I understand this comment. Given their budget for coders and
testers, I'd expect that they'd produce valid pages if validity were something
they found to be useful. This suggests that they do not find validity to be
something that carries its weight. However, I don't think you meant that.
Can you please clarify?

Scott

[Scott Meyers]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 22:18:50 +0200, Barbara de Zoete wrote:

Practical advantages of creating valid pages are, to me:
- all those who work on the pages work with the same standards and can take over
from each other with ease (assuming they are up to working with standards, that
is :-) );

Do you have any sense for how common such knowledge is? My original
motivation for asking this question was that in my initial contact with a
prospective web site maintainer, I mentioned that one of the things I wanted
to do was upgrade my pages to the point where they validate, and her reply was
"I have reviewed your site and the source code. I see nothing wrong with your
source code at the moment, other than the frames." Given the context of the
exchange between us, I think this comment reflects her lack of familiarity
with validation rather than a judgement about whether validation is useful.
Hence my interest in whether validation is important enough for me to insist
on finding somebody who is familiar with it.

Scott