Re: validator - how true is it?

* <ceo@alierra.com> wrote:
>  4.. I believe every site, which is a more or less complicated,
>will have at least 30 mistakes within the Validator.

Try:

  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ukoln.ac.uk%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uibk.ac.at%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sics.se%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cwi.nl%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.progeny.net%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ics.forth.gr%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.opera.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inria.fr%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mozilla.org%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inventivedesigners.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ilrt.bris.ac.uk%2Frdu%2Fw3
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jsrd.or.jp%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.man.ac.uk%2Findex.html
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dcita.gov.au%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibm.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.umich.edu%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.unibo.it%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecommerce.ac.uk%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.streamezzo.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sunderland.ac.uk%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nickelswebdesign.de%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.icra.org%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sogei.it%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.antennahouse.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.ust.hk%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.top4office.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrc.ca%2Fcisti%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.altova.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ivisgroup.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.novell.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xfsi.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mitsue.co.jp%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deri.org%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pint.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.watchfire.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ltg.ed.ac.uk%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fundacionctic.org%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.accessibility.nl%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crimsonlogic.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.schemasoft.com%2F
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.siderean.com%2F

Or those listed on

  http://www.w3csites.com/

Or those in

  http://www.google.com/search?q=%22valid+XHTML%22
  http://www.google.com/search?q=%22valid+HTML%22

You should find at least one document that you consider sufficiently
complicated for which the Validator does not report any error.

>I was just merely saying that inexperienced users firmly believe in
>Validator and they require their sites to be in conformity with its
>rules. Whereas, the users do not understand that the rules are not
>perfect. 

Maybe the rules are not perfect, but you'd have a hard time to point out
specific rules that make it impossible to author documents for which the
Validator does not currently report any errors. And in fact, if you know
all the rules, it is quite simple to author such documents.

For the specific error on http://www.alierra.com -- this is caused by

  <META http-equiv="Content-Type"
        content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

Remove the / and the error will go away. HTML Tidy,

  http://tidy.sourceforge.net/

will help you to remove such errors.

For further feedback on the Markup Validator please see 

  http://validator.w3.org/feedback.html

www-validator-css is the mailing list for the *CSS* Validator.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Friday, 28 January 2005 14:07:14 UTC