Conformance Claims - W3C Logo Use

Interestingly, after our audio conference, yesterday, I did a little
research on conformance claims with respect to web sites that boast the W3C
HTML 4.01 validation logo.

I did the following:  I used Google and typed into the search field,
valid-html401 (the file name I had for the validation logo)...that search
yielded some 17,000 plus results.  The majority of the results with,
"valid-html401" happened to be web statistics pages that had the file name
in text form but did not actually show the logo.  There were also a good
number of chat forums that had that file name somewhere in their text but
not the logo.

It took awhile but I identified 75 sites that used the logo and of the 75
tested, only 7 did not validate.  I ONLY looked at how the sites validated
by using W3C's HTML validation tool and did NO human testing.  Doing human
testing would have no doubt yielded different results - let's hope not too
different.

Two things come to mind:

1.  The majority of sites using the logo really are actually conforming
(again, without the human testing we really do not know).  But, this seems a
good initial sign.

2.  The numbers of hits on Google or any other search engine will be
misleading with regard to the actual number of sites using the logo as a
means to display W3C validation.

Again, the good news is that most sites (given my VERY small sample) will
likely validate.  

Doyle

Doyle Burnett
Education and Training Specialist
Multiple Disabilities Program
Special Education Service Agency
dburnett@sesa.org
Www.sesa.org
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Received on Friday, 1 April 2005 17:42:51 UTC