Feeling validated

Feeling validated

The W3C validator is a great tool. It allows developers to quickly and easily find and fix the inevitable problems that creep into any markup document.

As well as the quick and easy version, the advanced interface allows you to get a more verbose output. Until recently, one of the options was to view an outline of the document being validated. I found this feature very useful: I could see at a glance whether or not the order of my headings (H1, H2, etc.) made sense.

A little while back, the outline functionality disappeared. This was not deliberate, but it turns out that it was due for deletion anyway. There is actually a different dedicated service for examining the semantic structure of documents: the semantic data extractor. This tool will do outlining and more. Personally, I think it is a bit of a shame that validation and outlining have been split into two different services, but both services are immensely useful in their own right.

For a quick and easy way to validate the current document in your browser, drag this bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar and click on it whenever you want to run a check:

Validate this

Here is a bookmarklet to do semantic data extraction:

Extract semantic data

If you need to do batch validation, check out this desktop validator, which is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

But do not forget that the W3C validator is there for your benefit. If you think it can be improved in any way, be sure to give your feedback. Consider joining the mailing list, or simply hanging out in the IRC channel, #validator on the freenode network.

If you can contribute to the ongoing improvement of the validator, you’ll be in good company. Sir Tim Berners-Lee recently said:

The validator I think is a really valuable tool both for users and in helping standards deployment. I’d like it to check (even) more stuff, be (even) more helpful, and prioritize carefully its errors, warning and mild chidings. I’d like it to link to an explanations of why things should be a certain way.

The W3C validator is already a great tool. With the help of developers like you, it can become even greater

The New Voyagers – Find Information about Web standards

From the W3C Quality Assurance blog

The New Voyagers – Find Information about Web standards

Voyager 1, already the most distant human-made object in the cosmos, reaches 100 astronomical units from the sun on Tuesday, August 15 at 5:13 p.m. Eastern time (2:13 p.m. Pacific time). That means the spacecraft, which launched nearly three decades ago, is 100 times more distant from the sun than Earth is.

It is often quite difficult to find information related to your domain of activity. Weblogs are pouring information about technologies: opinions, rants, technical details, jokes, everyone is taking a part of it. But you need a probe to travel from planet to planet, some Web sites are aggregating this content. Here comes a list a of resources we are using:

• HTML and CSS
• Mobile Web Initiative
• Apache: HTTP (for this one it would be good to fix the links.)
• Semantic Web
• Semantic Web (French)
• SVG
• Mozilla

What are Web Standards?

What are Web Standards?

“The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), along with other groups and standards bodies, has established technologies for creating and interpreting web-based content. These technologies, which we call ‘web standards’, are carefully designed to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users while ensuring the long-term viability of any document published on the Web. Designing and building with these standards simplifies and lowers the cost of production, while delivering sites that are accessible to more people and more types of Internet devices. Sites developed along these lines will continue to function correctly as traditional desktop browsers evolve, and as new Internet devices come to market.”

Read more:

• The Web Standards Project
• From hacks to web standards – A web designers journey