Re: Quick help please - Validation

This thread is a perfect example of the need for validation that was asked=
=20
about in another thread.  If Rick had validated his pages with either the=20
W3C Validation Services (http://validator.w3.org) or one of the validators=
=20
one can install on their machine like the CSE HTML Validator=20
(www.htmlvalidator.com) or Dave Ragett's Tidy, he wouldn't have needed to=20
ask for help on this list at all.  I find that most of the problems people=
=20
encounter while creating Web pages come from invalid or incorrect markup=20
that any of the above validators will catch in a second.

The most often seen mistakes include improper tag nesting, various unclosed=
=20
tags and illegal attributes or attribute values (like putting=20
valign=3D"center" in a td or th tag instead of "middle" or "top" or=
 "bottom")=20
on top of all the other junk that many WYSIWYG tools add to the code.  All=
=20
those errors can have varying effects ranging from the page not rendering=20
properly or not rendering at all to crashing the browser altogether.  Most=
=20
validators will also flag images with no Alt attributes (which hurt=20
accessibility as well as search engine ranking) and a lot more similarly=20
"small" things that can make a big difference in the quality of your=20
work.   A simple trip to a validator will save you a lot of headaches so I=
=20
find that it is a very important step in my own page development process as=
=20
I think it should be for everyone.

HTH!

St=E9phane Bergeron

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Rick" <altwd(at)earthlink.net>
>To: "HTML Writer's Guild" <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 2:03 PM
>Subject: Quick help please
>
>
> >     Hi.  I need some fast help and it would be geatly appreciated. This
> > might be something simple but I just called the customer to take a look
> > at their site and tell me what changes they want and in NN a blank page
> > loads.  IE it seems to be fine so I'm gonna start looking now but maybe
> > somebody will find the error before I do, so could somebody using NN
> > please go look at www.century21beyond2000.com and tell me what they
> > see?  Thanks!!!  Rick
> >

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