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Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 23:06:42 -0500
To: stlwebdev@stlwebdev.org
Subject: STLWEBDEV: HTML Validators
Reply-To: stlwebdev@stlwebdev.org
"Leland V. Lammert" wrote:
> http://validator.w3.org/
Only validates to the W3C standards. Not necessarily what will
degrade
gracefully or even display properly in the real-world browsers.
Check out http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/ for stuff the W3C will
happily
validate as complying with the spec, but will fail to render per the
spec
because of the imperfect implementations in the various browsers.
> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
I tend to use a style of utilizing whitespace as visual cues for
maintainers and that minimizes right-shifting-code-from-tab-itis.
I'll often collapse "artifact" elements of the page that don't change
across the entire site or are incidental to the core purpose of the
page
to minimize their visual distraction from the more important code in
the page. Tidy doesn't tend to understand the "visual" nature of
looking
at a page's source code, particularly if you're in maintenance mode
(or more importantly, _someone else_ is) and you want them to zero in
on the problem / active area of the page as fast as possible.
And then there are other times where canonizing whitespace causes the
browser to render a space when you don't want *any* (e.g. cells
containing images of exact sizes). Tidy's rules of it's idea of
what your HTML should look like don't always coincide with mine. And
if your document isn't validated before you "tidy" it up, it can
really
hose the way it looks.
> DreamWeaver 4 does a pretty decent job of code cleanup.
I've seen some pretty atrocious HTML that doesn't validate from
DreamWeaver 4. Particularly framesets and rollover stuff. Besides,
who
needs all that JavaScript code bloat just for rollovers?
I'm glad to see you *do* validate your code. It demonstrates you care
about what you'll put your name on. It also makes it easier for
repurposing existing pages, not necessarily for human consumption. :)
Mike808/
-- Anonymous, April 11, 2001