Comments on: Does Code Validation Matter?

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 00:44:13 +0000

Well, it’s about time you came around to my way of thinking…

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:36:56 +0000

It matters only if you want to author your pages in XHTML Strict and serve them as application+xml... which in most cases has the effect of creating an extremely "breakable" site. If you pass the site off to your client and there's *any* chance it can be broken by them (via sloppy updating, etc), then my position is that that's an irresponsible way to build a site.

I am used to working in environments where hundreds (if not thousands) of people have access to the updating of sites, so clearly in cases like this error tolerance is necessary.

I always find it funny when people complain about invalid code breaking their Strict/application+xml pages. Just don't use Strict/application+xml then!!! Is that so hard?

By: Big John

Big John — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:57:43 +0000

I have been informed that it does matter, because such an invalid site can’t proudly display the W3C button without risking people clicking it and receiving an *ERROR!* result for that site. Naturally that would be highly embarrassing, thus the need to hide IE proprietary CSS within conditional comments.

That has the effect of hiding the cruft from the validator and returning a glowing endorsement for the site. (heh heh!)

By: Zoe

Zoe — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 19:30:45 +0000

Bravo. Well said. Validation is just a means of making sure you don’t do something stupid. It’s a tool. If you know why you have those errors in there (IE hack or whatnot) then I agree: who cares? It’s important to make sure your pages validate as an debugging mechanism, but it’s not an end in itself, as you said.