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- Why validate?Why is it considered good practice to validate your websites code?
Validating your web pages is an excellent way to debug. Today’s selection of web browsers can do a great job at parsing badly written HTML, XHTML and CSS, however; the errors that are left in a websites coding can have a negative effect. Web browsers use their own software which means that any errors will be dealt with differently and the knock on effect is that applying style or layout becomes inconsistent. For a number of years now, a community called The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has been developing web standards to help improve and maintain the long term growth of the internet. Using these standards means that there is an improved likelihood of your web page being handled consistently across the many different internet browsers that exist or are being developed today.Many web developers who create rich web applications realise that clean, robust and reliable scripting requires that the document be parsed by the client application without errors so they will make sure that their mark-up language (HTML, XHTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS) is validated before going on to actualize a lavish interactive layer. Confirming that your web page renders correctly across browsers does not mean it will always continue to do so but if web developers work to the standards set out by the WC3 and validate their web pages, which is by far the simplest way to ensure a page is built in accordance to the standards, then by doing so web developers encourage future proofing, that the technology will be able to deliver a website design as it was intended to appear.
Validating your web pages and applications helps teach good practice.
For many years, professional web developers have been scripting websites with HTML and CSS; it has become second nature to them. For those people who are new to web development, automated checking tools such as the WC3 validators have become an important way for the beginner to spot mistakes. Validation tests are an exceptional way to introduce the novice web developer to expansive, more elaborate quality control approaches, for example, website accessibility.
Validation is most definitely a mark of excellence and professionalism on the part of the developer, it reflects the developers care and attention to detail. There are very few certifications offered to web professionals, most are self taught. Experienced developers will take great pride in creating well formed and well marked-up web content. Validation is an ideal and swift way to determine whether the code that lies behind your website is the work of an experienced and meticulous developer or the work of an unconscientious dabbler. Web page validation improves your chances of being listed on search engines. A good amount of the engines have trouble indexing or cataloguing websites with code full of serious errors and this can reduce the flow of visitors to your website who come via the search engine route.
Think of it like this, if you spend good money to build a house, you expect the builder to use mortar between the bricks. Not validating pages is like leaving out the mortar but it should be standard practice to include it. If you ever needed a way to check if a web development company is worth employing - check their own website for validated web pages. If they can't be bothered to validate their own website pages, the chances are they won't bother to validate yours.