Validation

Why you should validate your website?
Why those little logos in my footer?



Let's do an example. There's a completely practical reason why an invalid fix that looks fine in IE or Opera or Netscape is not good. And that's a thing that has to do with the nature of our web's code.

What the W3C is trying to do is attempting to make a code that can go decades and centuries, getting broader in scope instead of ever shutting out it's early versions. That's what code must do: code is for recording what we think. There are no paper backups of the web. Every day we put more on the web that we're not putting in our traditional medias. If we don't use extensible code, then our current history evaporates with the next minor tech change. We've never had this problem before. Before a mark on a page could go centuries; there'd always be daylight to read it by. This is a new problem and it required a new solution.

We have to validate because that's the only way to know our code won't fail as the syntax develops. We can't be assured that a Microsoft expression won't mess something down the road, because the code's architects at the W3C will be extending our code based on what they know is unused syntax. They have no way of knowing all the specialty browser expressions like Microsoft's.

So you and I need to make sure our code uses only the existing syntax and the existing rules. Not add any invalid markup from an outside source that can run afoul of future syntax and future rules. And the only way to be sure is to run the validator. Fortunately that's real easy. If it's new to you, here is the CSS validator and here the MARKUP validator. And to make it even easier, there's these wonderful Gazingus bookmarklets.

If you don't know six ways to abuse a tool then you don't know how to use it. Play with this stuff. That's the only way we ever learn anything. Mess with the code.”