How important is validation?

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  • Scott Meyers

    How important is validation?

    I have a web site that, due to maintenance by several people, some of whom are
    fairly clueless about HTML and CSS, etc. (notably me), has gotten to the point
    where I'm pretty sure it's suffering from bit rot. Though the pages seem to
    display okay under IE and FF, I really think it's time for an under-the-hood
    cleaning. I recently received a copy of Molly Holzschlag's "Spring Into HTML
    and CSS," and in the first chapter, she makes a big deal of producing pages
    that validate cleanly. However, she doesn't explain why this is important,
    e.g., doesn't say what the consequences of validation failure are.

    I went to http://validator.w3.org/ and was unsurprised to see my home page
    fail to validate. But then I got to playing around, and I found that the home
    pages for none of the following validate, either: yahoo, ebay, google, artima,
    and cnn. This makes me wonder whether validation is really something I need
    to worry about. Morally, I'm all for standards, and given a choice between
    pages that validate and those that do not, I'd choose validation, but I'm
    going to have to find somebody else to do the work for me (somebody who DOES
    know about HTML and CSS, etc.), and I'm worried that finding somebody who is
    familiar with validation is going to be a lot harder and/or more expensive
    than finding somebody who is not.

    Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
    pages validate are? Also, I'm open to suggestions on who to consider hiring
    to do the work at my site (which happens to be aristeia.com).

    Thanks,

    Scott
  • Adrienne

    #2
    Re: How important is validation?

    Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Scott Meyers <Usenet@aristei a.com>
    writing in news:MPG.1d67e1 728e7f9c8b9897f 2@news.hevanet. com:
    [color=blue]
    > Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of
    > having pages validate are?[/color]

    In the old days, before browsers did so much error correction, writing
    valid code was important, because browsers would not render invalid
    markup. For example, a missing </td> would make Netscape give a blank
    page.

    Now browsers do a lot of error correction, especially IE. Maybe one of
    the reasons IE is so behind all the others is because there was so much
    put in to do error correction. However, some browsers, if served
    application text/xhtml+xml and the markup is not well formed, will
    partially display with an error message.

    For me it is a tool to discover why something is not rendering the way I
    think it should. It is also a matter of pride, everything I produce is
    valid. That might be because on new documents, I start with a strict
    DOCType, and no presentational markup.

    With that said, I have found that using valid, sematically correct,
    presentationall ess markup has made me and my clients get very good SERPs,
    without resorting to any trickery.... <Mafia music>and now that I have
    told you my secret, I'm going to have to kill you. ;-)</music>

    --
    Adrienne Boswell
    Arbpen Consulting will help you harness valuable insights and translate them into tangible results by merging data and strategy.

    Please respond to the group so others can share

    Comment

    • Brian

      #3
      Re: How important is validation?

      Scott Meyers wrote:[color=blue]
      > I recently received a copy of Molly Holzschlag's "Spring Into HTML
      > and CSS," and in the first chapter, she makes a big deal of producing
      > pages that validate cleanly. However, she doesn't explain why this
      > is important, e.g., doesn't say what the consequences of validation
      > failure are.[/color]

      Error correction. If your documents validate, the onus is on the browser
      to do the right thing. If they don't, then they'll guess at what you
      meant. How well they'll guess is, erm, anyone's guess. :-D (Apologies
      for the corny joke.)
      [color=blue]
      > then I got to playing around, and I found that the home pages for
      > none of the following validate, either: yahoo, ebay, google, artima,
      > and cnn.[/color]

      Most pages don't. In the case of Yahoo, CNN, et. al., they likely have
      substantial budgets for coders and testing. Do you?
      [color=blue]
      > This makes me wonder whether validation is really something I need to
      > worry about.[/color]

      It is if you want durable www documents.
      [color=blue]
      > Morally, I'm all for standards,[/color]

      Morals have nothing to do with it. Practically, validation is a useful tool.


      [color=blue]
      > Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of
      > having pages validate are?[/color]

      I already did. Perhaps I could encourage you to consider the advantages
      of googling the group archives? ;-)

      --
      Brian

      Comment

      • Barbara de Zoete

        #4
        Re: How important is validation?

        On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 11:59:44 -0700, Scott Meyers <Usenet@aristei a.com> wrote:
        [color=blue]
        > I recently received a copy of Molly Holzschlag's "Spring Into HTML
        > and CSS," and in the first chapter, she makes a big deal of producing pages
        > that validate cleanly. However, she doesn't explain why this is important,
        > e.g., doesn't say what the consequences of validation failure are.
        >
        > I went to http://validator.w3.org/ and was unsurprised to see my home page
        > fail to validate.
        > <http://aristeia.com/>[/color]
        [color=blue]
        > Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
        > pages validate are?[/color]

        Practical advantages of creating valid pages are, to me:
        - all those who work on the pages work with the same standards and can take over
        from each other with ease (assuming they are up to working with standards, that
        is :-) );
        - one knows for sure it is not an error in the code that is the cause of that
        unwanted <*$+@@ &££@!!> rendering effect :-) ;
        - years from now you as the author will still understand what you did when you
        read back the code;
        - I'm pretty sure valid code is a better garantee of getting your content across
        the world wide web with its wide variaty of browsers (like text- and aural
        browsers or screen readers, besides the more usual graphical ones), then is
        invalid code, although to be really sure, one should also provide valid code
        that is logical, has some semantics to it;
        - I expect that valid code will not only work in the browsers of the present,
        but will still work fine in browsers to come.



        --
        ,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
        | weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
        | webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
        |zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
        `-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

        Comment

        • Barbara de Zoete

          #5
          Re: How important is validation?

          On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:02:22 GMT, Adrienne <arbpen2003@sbc global.net> wrote:
          [color=blue]
          > With that said, I have found that using valid, sematically correct,
          > presentationall ess markup has made me and my clients get very good SERPs,
          > without resorting to any trickery....[/color]

          Ah, yes. That too of course.
          [color=blue]
          > <Mafia music>and now that I have
          > told you my secret, I'm going to have to kill you. ;-)</music>
          >[/color]

          lol

          --
          ,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
          | weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
          | webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
          |zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
          `-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

          Comment

          • Spartanicus

            #6
            Re: How important is validation?

            Scott Meyers <Usenet@aristei a.com> wrote:
            [color=blue]
            >Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
            >pages validate are?[/color]

            How long is a bit of string?
            [color=blue]
            >aristeia.com[/color]

            It's funny that you are a C++ specialist, normally programmers are
            sticklers for correct syntax.

            There are more pressing issues than validation that should be solved
            first, such as:

            1) If you specify one colour you need to specify them all. Currently my
            default link colour is used, but legibility is very poor against the
            green of the navigation section of your site.
            2) Your frames cause problems, users cannot bookmark specific views,
            search engine indexing is poor, orphaned pages (pages without a nav
            section) to name a few.
            3) Your documents contain very little if any structure, you should use
            headings.
            4) Some of your links attempt to open a new window/tab, this is really
            bad form since it forces your preferences onto people who do *not* want
            new windows/tabs to be opened.

            --
            Spartanicus

            Comment

            • Nick Theodorakis

              #7
              Re: How important is validation?

              On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:02:22 GMT, Adrienne <arbpen2003@sbc global.net>
              wrote:

              [...]
              [color=blue]
              >In the old days, before browsers did so much error correction, writing
              >valid code was important, because browsers would not render invalid
              >markup. For example, a missing </td> would make Netscape give a blank
              >page.
              >[/color]

              Validation wouldn't have helped in that case anyway, since the closing
              </td> is optional ;-)

              Nick

              --
              Nick Theodorakis
              nick_theodoraki s@hotmail.com
              contact form:

              Comment

              • Andy Dingley

                #8
                Re: How important is validation?

                On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 11:59:44 -0700, Scott Meyers <Usenet@aristei a.com>
                wrote:
                [color=blue]
                >Can somebody please explain to me what the practical advantages of having
                >pages validate are?[/color]

                Simplicity. "Valid" is a simple and objective status. "Invalid" may or
                may not work - there is (very much so!) invalidity and invalidity. An
                empty <div> will cause Tidy to whine, the _presence_ (yes, presence!) of
                a title attribute will cause Dreamweaver to complain. You can have HTML
                documents that have minor invalidities no browser will really fall over,
                or they might be major things (like an unclosed <table>) that really do
                blow things out of the water. Unless you're obsessive about keeping up
                to date on browser foibles, it's impossible to really know how bad an
                invalidity's effects will be.

                But if you're valid, you're valid. No arguments about it (except of
                course on Usenet)

                Comment

                • Scott Meyers

                  #9
                  Re: How important is validation?

                  On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:15:37 GMT, Brian wrote:[color=blue][color=green]
                  > > then I got to playing around, and I found that the home pages for
                  > > none of the following validate, either: yahoo, ebay, google, artima,
                  > > and cnn.[/color]
                  >
                  > Most pages don't. In the case of Yahoo, CNN, et. al., they likely have
                  > substantial budgets for coders and testing. Do you?[/color]

                  I'm not sure I understand this comment. Given their budget for coders and
                  testers, I'd expect that they'd produce valid pages if validity were something
                  they found to be useful. This suggests that they do not find validity to be
                  something that carries its weight. However, I don't think you meant that.
                  Can you please clarify?

                  Scott

                  Comment

                  • Scott Meyers

                    #10
                    Re: How important is validation?

                    On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 22:18:50 +0200, Barbara de Zoete wrote:[color=blue]
                    > Practical advantages of creating valid pages are, to me:
                    > - all those who work on the pages work with the same standards and can take over
                    > from each other with ease (assuming they are up to working with standards, that
                    > is :-) );[/color]

                    Do you have any sense for how common such knowledge is? My original
                    motivation for asking this question was that in my initial contact with a
                    prospective web site maintainer, I mentioned that one of the things I wanted
                    to do was upgrade my pages to the point where they validate, and her reply was
                    "I have reviewed your site and the source code. I see nothing wrong with your
                    source code at the moment, other than the frames." Given the context of the
                    exchange between us, I think this comment reflects her lack of familiarity
                    with validation rather than a judgement about whether validation is useful.
                    Hence my interest in whether validation is important enough for me to insist
                    on finding somebody who is familiar with it.

                    Scott

                    Comment

                    • Scott Meyers

                      #11
                      Re: How important is validation?

                      On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:22:00 GMT, Spartanicus wrote:[color=blue]
                      > It's funny that you are a C++ specialist, normally programmers are
                      > sticklers for correct syntax.[/color]

                      Hence my moral support for standards :-) However, there is a lot of C++ code
                      that is written that deliberately does not obey standards;
                      standards-compliance is but one of a number of criteria that people take into
                      account when deciding how to approach a project. FWIW (nothing in this
                      newsgroup), I'd venture to guess that the vast majority of commerical C++
                      programs contain at least some technically invalid constructs. Virtually all
                      compilers accept them, so there's little incentive to fix them (or even to
                      avoid including them in future code). Given that so many big sites produce
                      pages that don't validate, it looks like there is a similar situation in
                      webpageville.
                      [color=blue]
                      > 1) If you specify one colour you need to specify them all. Currently my
                      > default link colour is used, but legibility is very poor against the
                      > green of the navigation section of your site.
                      > 2) Your frames cause problems, users cannot bookmark specific views,
                      > search engine indexing is poor, orphaned pages (pages without a nav
                      > section) to name a few.
                      > 3) Your documents contain very little if any structure, you should use
                      > headings.
                      > 4) Some of your links attempt to open a new window/tab, this is really
                      > bad form since it forces your preferences onto people who do *not* want
                      > new windows/tabs to be opened.[/color]

                      Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it.

                      Some of the issues above are deliberate design decisions (e.g., relatively
                      little structure, opening new windows), some are not (e.g., color
                      specification, link legibility). Some of the deliberate decisions should
                      probably be reconsidered (e.g., opening new windows). As I said, the site has
                      just kind of evolved over the years, and it's time for somebody who knows what
                      they are doing to give it a tune-up.

                      As for frames, I hate them, too, but I don't know of any other way to make it
                      possible for the content area to scroll while the navigation area remains in
                      view. Then again, I'm a C++ weenie, not an HTML/CSS weenie. If there's
                      another way to achieve this effect, please tell me about it. I'm sure this is
                      well-trod ground in this newsgroup, so a link or likely set of search terms
                      would be fine.

                      Thanks,

                      Scott

                      Comment

                      • Joel Shepherd

                        #12
                        Re: How important is validation?

                        Scott Meyers <Usenet@aristei a.com> wrote:
                        [color=blue]
                        > On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:15:37 GMT, Brian wrote:[color=green]
                        > >
                        > > In the case of Yahoo, CNN, et. al., they likely have
                        > > substantial budgets for coders and testing. Do you?[/color]
                        >
                        > I'm not sure I understand this comment. Given their budget for coders and
                        > testers, I'd expect that they'd produce valid pages if validity were something
                        > they found to be useful.[/color]

                        Right.
                        [color=blue]
                        > This suggests that they do not find validity to be
                        > something that carries its weight.[/color]

                        Well, more likely, that the net present value of paying a developer to
                        generate huge volumes of valid code isn't very high. Writing valid code
                        takes more skill and/or time than writing tag soup that generally works
                        alright. I imagine for most of these companies, "generally works
                        alright" is good enough, and they'd rather focus their efforts and
                        resources on compelling content, eye candy, and so on. After all, most
                        of their readers don't know or care if their pages are valid or not.

                        _But_, that doesn't change the fact that writing valid HTML and CSS is
                        future-proofing your pages. A large company may have the luxury -- if
                        and when they decide it's worth their while -- to devote a lot of
                        resources to an intense effort to clean up their HTML. A one- or
                        two-person operation generally does not have that luxury. So it makes
                        sense for a small operation to devote a bit of time upfront towards
                        writing good markup, because they odds of them having time and resources
                        to go back later to clean it up aren't good.

                        --
                        Joel.

                        Comment

                        • Alan J. Flavell

                          #13
                          Re: How important is validation?

                          On Sat, 13 Aug 2005, Scott Meyers wrote:
                          [color=blue]
                          > But then I got to playing around, and I found that the home pages
                          > for none of the following validate, either: yahoo, ebay, google,
                          > artima, and cnn. This makes me wonder whether validation is really
                          > something I need to worry about.[/color]

                          There are also plenty of commercial pages that don't work with
                          www-compatible browsers, but only with MSIE. Some of us have higher
                          standards.
                          [color=blue]
                          > Morally, I'm all for standards, and given a choice between pages
                          > that validate and those that do not, I'd choose validation, but I'm
                          > going to have to find somebody else to do the work for me (somebody
                          > who DOES know about HTML and CSS, etc.),[/color]

                          As I happens, I know how to do that by hand, but, if I didn't, I have
                          a computer to help me to generate output that would be guaranteed
                          valid. Of course, there's far more to producing a good web page than
                          merely valid syntax, but a web page with invalid syntax is no better
                          than literature with lots of wrongly-spelled words, AFAICS.

                          Quite why those popular sites consider it advantageous to extrude
                          syntactically invalid stuff, I can't tell you - but I see no advantage
                          it in myself.

                          You can also be assured that when you have a problem and ask for
                          advice here, the only advice you're likely to get (aside from being
                          advised to fix your syntax errors and try again) will be from the kind
                          of sloppy and coudn't-care-less commentator who is prepared to spend
                          their time fiddling with someone else's invalid syntax. That kind of
                          advice tends to be worth even less than you paid for it, to be frank.
                          [color=blue]
                          > to do the work at my site (which happens to be aristeia.com).[/color]
                          ___
                          /
                          FRAME: buttons
                          FRAME: main_body

                          This web page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.

                          \___

                          That site uses frames, but your author doesn't support them.

                          Comment

                          • David Dorward

                            #14
                            Re: How important is validation?

                            Scott Meyers wrote:
                            [color=blue]
                            > As for frames, I hate them, too, but I don't know of any other way to make
                            > it possible for the content area to scroll while the navigation area
                            > remains in view.[/color]

                            So what if the navigation doesn't remain in view? Scrolling navigation works
                            for the vast majority of sites out here.


                            --
                            David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me .uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
                            Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

                            Comment

                            • Andy Dingley

                              #15
                              Re: How important is validation?

                              On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:15:37 GMT, Brian
                              <usenet3@juliet remblay.com.inv alid> wrote:
                              [color=blue]
                              >Most pages don't. In the case of Yahoo, CNN, et. al., they likely have
                              >substantial budgets for coders and testing. Do you?[/color]

                              Why would you think that ? 8-) I'm dealing commercially with two of
                              these "blue chips" right this week and their technical knowledge
                              borders on the negligible. I dealt with them both a year ago (very
                              similar project) and they were no better then. Although there are people
                              with a clue somewhere inside the organisation, they're such big
                              organisations that this is thoroughly diluted by pointy hair.

                              I'd add that neither of these are Google or Amazon (although of similar
                              scale). I've always found every technical contact at either of those two
                              to be spot-on.

                              Comment

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