Advanced 1 - Validating Your Page   Back | Next

Why Validate?

One reason to make your pages validate, is so they will be easier to code for cross-browser compatibility. Although validation does not guarantee cross-browser compatibility, it goes a long way toward making that job easier.

Perhaps equally important, is getting your pages noticed by Google, and other search engines. It has been said that one single invalid line will cause a search engine to ignore your page entirely.

You can certainly help or hurt your search engine visibility by the way you code your pages. The World Wide Web Consortium (w3 for short) sets the standards for what browsers are supposed to do with html code. So if you're interested in having search engines, such as Google, find your page once you make it public, you need to learn about validating your code.

How do I validate my page?

To see if the page you have created will validate, click on the link on the last page of this tutorial that goes to the validator.w3.org, and give it a try. The link will take you to the w3 validation service page. To validate your page, click on the tab for validation by file upload and navigate to the location of the file you want to validate on your computer and click the button to check the file.

To make it easier, the validation service page has a "browse" function. Click on the "browse" button and search your computer for the file you wish to validate. When you find that file, double-click on it, and you will be returned to the validation service page. Click on "check" and wait. In a few seconds, you will receive the response that either your page is "valid html" or that your page is "not valid" html. The w3.org web site and validation pages have links to help you learn how to make your page validate.

If you already have a page on the web, you can enter the address for that page on the w3 validator main page.

Don't be alarmed if your first effort brings a "does not validate" message listing 3, 16, 63 or even 104 errors! Mine all did at first. The W3C site offers useful explanations. It tells you exactly what and where the errors are, kind of like a spellcheck. Often, correcting a single "cascading error" will clean up several dozen others at the same time. Working out the validation process may be exasperating at first, but it will speed up and sharpen your grasp of HTML code. You and your web site will both improve!

Once you have your website up and running with all valid pages, you may find that the occasional edit will cause a validation error. The most common will usually be tags that are left open, or closed in the wrong place, or a line element outside a block element. You will eventually learn what that means. You will find your own comfort level with validation. Personally, although I strive for perfection, there will usually be a few pages that don't validate because I had to do a quick edit and didn't check them afterward. What I usually do is go back and check them eventually. It's a personal choice, a matter of craftsmanship.

This is similar to spell checking. I'm surprised when I see a spelling error on a page that's been that way for years. Why didn't anyone call that to my attention? There was a university study that said if you get the first letter and last letter in a word correct, you can scramble the letters in between and the human eye and brain will unscramble them. Maybe that's why we miss sepillng erorrs. For a quick and easy way to spell check your page, try copying the text from a normal browser view of the page (not the code in the source view) and paste it into a page in a word processor that has on-the-fly spell checking.

Is your page sophisticated enough for the web? Read on...

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