Re: Differences between the W3C HTML Validator and the WDG HTML Validator

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, matthias.mauch@aadmm.de wrote:

> Dear W3C Validator Team,

You sent your message to a public discussion list, so I will respond, 
despite not being part of the Team, just a partipant in the list.

> "Is there an HTML Validator that validate a web site recursive?"
>
> The Forum Admins post a link to http://validator.w3.org/about.html
> and refer to the "WDG HTML Validator" on this page.

That indirectly answers the question, since the WDG validator at
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ (which is really a markup 
validator, like validator.w3.org, in fact to a greater extent, since it
can handle "custom DTDs" better) is indeed capable of validating an entire 
site. You just check the "Validate entire site" checkbox in its main user 
interface.

> Is this
> HTML Validator the same as the original W3C HTML Validator?

No.

> Should a Web Developer use only the W3C HTML Validator or can he
> also use the WDG HTML Validator?

Well, the W3C page mentioned says:
"The WDG HTML validator is another excellent online validation service."

What you _should_ use depends on your definition of "should".

A validator is just a tool for testing compliance with syntactic rules.
If you ask me, I would say: use whatever tools you find useful and 
estimate reliable for your purposes. Your mileage may vary: your company's 
Quality Assurance department, your coutry's officials, or the teachers of 
your school may have authority over you and they may require that you use 
this or that tool, just as they could tell you to make your database 
mauve. If they tell you to use the W3C validator, then you 
cannot satisfy the requirement by using the WDG validator
(though they might never notice that you violate the requirement,
if your markup is valid).

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Friday, 15 July 2005 05:40:45 UTC