In Part One I discussed the Benefits of HTML Validation.
Part One can be viewed HTML 4.01 Strict, Transitional, Frameset
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01
Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">XHTML 1.0 Strict,
Transitional, Frameset
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0
Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">XHTML1.1 DTD
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
Here's an example of a web site I recently designed which has correctly validated XHTML and CSS: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
6. Test for different screen resolutions
The current trend is that more and more computers are using a screen size of 1024x768 pixels:
Here are the stats for June 2005:
1024x768..............................56%
800x600...............................28%
Higher than 1024x768............11%
7. Check connectivity speeds
Web pages that contain a large number of graphics or tables, use flash or video, will load slowly or sometimes not at all with a dial up connection but will be fine with a cable or dsl connection. Although the trend is towards people converting to high speed connections many still use dial-up to surf the Net for information. Therefore design your site for both.
C.Validation Tools
HTML/XHTML validation
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Link checker
http://www.anybrowser.com
Connectivity Test
http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm
D.Common HTML/XHTML validation errors
Improper Nesting of Tags
This is a very common error. You should close tags your in the reverse of the order you opened them:
Found an error or have a suggestion? Let us know and we'll review it.
<xx><yy>content</yy></xx>.
An easy error to make, but it's easy to fix, too.
Missing alt tags
You should include alt tags for all your images with a text description so that visitors will still know what the image is about even if they turn off viewing images in their browser.
Improper closing of tags
ie <p>This is a paragraph<p>. The end tag should be </p>
It will validate in html, but not xhtml.
For XHTML 1.0 validation it's easy to omit these closing tags:
<br /> or <hr /> or <img src="xx.gif" />
Margin height and width
marginheight="0"
^Error: there is no attribute "MARGINHEIGHT" for this element. Use CSS to fix this error.
marginwidth="0"
^Error: there is no attribute "MARGINWIDTH" for this element. The only fix for this is to utilize CSS and absolute positioning.
Horizontal Line Color
<hr size="1" color="#C0C0C0">
^Error: there is no attribute "COLOR" for this element.
This can only be fixed with CSS.
ie <div
style="color:#000;background-color:#C0C0C0;height:1px;font-size:1px;">
</div>
Border Color
bordercolor="#ffffff"
^Error: there is no attribute "BORDERCOLOR" for this
element. This can only be fixed with CSS.
Unescaped Ampersand (XHTML)
Always use & in place of &.
Conclusion:
If you get into the habit of always validating your web pages, your web site will be faster loading, more search engine friendly, accessible to a greater number of devices and therefore appeal to a larger number of visitors.
Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable
Web Site Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his
"Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles.
mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read more of his
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The Importance of HTML / XHTML Validation
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