Advanced HTML: Validation and Good HTML
In the Writing HTML and more stuff pages of the Basic HTML part of this workshop, we talked about RULES for writing "Good HTML ". But you might ask, and quite rightly, Who Cares?
We care, because:
But sometimes it's hard to know what's good, or to catch all of our mistakes. I assert that the information in this workshop tells you how to write good HTML, because I got it from the HTML 3.2 definition published by the W3 consortium. This means that any page that is written according to these rules is valid HTML 3.2 (the 3.2 is the "version number" of the rules---version 1.0 would be the first, 2.0 the next major revision, etc., just like with software revisions). Such a page may be identified as being valid HTML 3.2 by putting a line that reads
- We DON'T know what browser is looking at the document--but with good HTML, the document ought display properly no matter what browser they are using. If the document is "bad" HTML, it's anyone's guess what will show up.
- There is an aesthetic pleasure in doing so.
- When someone copies your page, they will at least be starting with a good document
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> at the very top of the page (before, even, the <html> tag).An HTML 3.2 document with this line can be checked by using a number of HTML validators---for example, Kinder Gentler Validation, which may be found as the first of the Validation suites in the HTML Validation Tools page. To use a validator, one just gives the URL of the page to be validated (NOTE: this requires that the page be on a server---see the how it all works page), and the validator comes back with a list of errors, if any.
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last modified (( Jun 17 07:47:02 1997 ))
HTML/WWW Wkshop: Adv HTML-Validation
©1997 Gavin LaRose
Comments to: glarose@NebrWesleyan.edu