[ANN] Beta test for the Markup Validator - 0.6.5beta2

Greetings All.

I am glad to announce the second phase of public beta testing for the 
Markup Validator version 0.6.5.

	http://validator.w3.org:8001/


**  STATUS  **

Version 0.6.5beta2 is the third consecutive beta version for the Markup 
Validator. Previous beta versions were:

0.6.2 beta
	http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2003Jun/0062.html
0.6.5 beta 1
	http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2003Aug/0105.html

A lot has been achieved through this development: 0.6.2 included 
improvements in character encoding handling, 0.6.5beta1 fixed a lot of 
bugs, and finally, for 0.6.5beta2, a lot of effort was dedicated to 
improve usability, documentation and navigation.

We realize that the official W3C Markup Validation service would 
benefit from a lot of these fixes and improvements, and while this beta 
version may not be perfect yet (that's why it is a beta), we seriously 
hope that your feedback and help will help us polish it for a stable, 
official release in a matter of weeks. We also plan to have a much 
shorter release cycle in the future.


**  CHANGES  **

You will notice that the style and navigation was slightly changed, and 
that the documentation has been updated and improved (including a new 
document on installing the Validator locally).

The first beta test included as a new feature better "human-friendly" 
error messages: we have included your many good contributions to the 
database of error message explanations.

The controversial "fussy parsing" feature, also introduced in 
0.6.5beta1, was not considered ready for prime time and removed, at 
least for the time being.

This version also includes a few bug fixes, but note that not all known 
bugs are fixed with this version.


**  FEEDBACK  **

We are doing our best to improve the Markup Validator to be accurate 
and friendly, and this can only be achieved with *your* support and 
feedback, especially during beta testing periods.

Your comments, feedback and help are much welcome on the public 
mailing-list www-validator@w3.org:
	http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/

Before submitting a bug report, we encourage you to check that it is 
not an already acknowledged issue, with our bug/issue tracking system:
	http://www.w3.org/Bugs/

For this particular beta testing period, we especially welcome comments 
on the usability and navigation, suggestions to improve the 
documentation, tweaks and fixes for our new style-sheets, and other 
Interface-related feedback.


**  INSTALL THIS BETA LOCALLY  **

If you are a developer, we encourage you to not only try the online 
Markup Validation service at http://validator.w3.org:8001/, we also 
encourage you to get the source for this beta in our CVS repository, 
and perhaps install it locally, too.

Instructions to get the 0.6.5beta2 CVS code at:
	http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/validator/
Instructions on how to install the Markup Validator locally at:
	 http://validator.w3.org:8001/docs/install.html


**  THANKS  **

While this is not an official release announcement, I would still 
really like to thank everyone behind the Markup Validator project, 
participants on the www-validator mailing-list offering a lot of 
support and feedback, and qa-dev contributors giving a lot of their 
time and doing a great job at developing the Markup Validator and other 
tools. Your work and help is a truly valuable service to the Web 
community.


Thank you.
-- 
olivier Thereaux - W3C / QA / Tools
http://www.w3.org/People/olivier/