Comments on: CSS/ xhtml: does validation matter?

By: Web Standards, Accessibility & More » Is HTML Code Validation Necessary?

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:37:14 +0000

[...] CSS/ xhtml: does validation matter? by Bruce Lawson (November 21, 2004) But no client has ever demanded that the pages validate – itself a sign that validation is a means rather than an end. Categories: Web Development Tags: Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment Trackback [...]

By: Tinker

Tinker — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:15:35 +0000

The most prominent sites don’t validate because idiot online validators can’t deal with the scripting and programming used to create them.

Try to validate a PHP-based or .Net-driven site and the online validators puke all over themselves.

It has nothing to do with available resources or ne’r do well attitudes. I write perfectly valid and perfectly validating sites in XHTML. As soon as I add the PHP scripts, the validators throw hissy fits because I must – absolutely must – declare a variabel to pass between pages.

Like me, developing working websites demands that the developer use for cost offline packages that can handle scripting languages when we test our sites.

Better to say, “A pity that with all their resources, the W3C and the WDG can’t write an online validator that understands that a scripted pages need to pass variables…” But then, that’s not their interest.

Or maybe we can try to teach everyone else that the one-size-fits-all online validators really don’t.

By: alex

alex — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:28:33 +0000

Considering the fact the big sites on the internet have masses of resources it is a real shame that they don’t set a good example, especially when a lot of the hypocrites are members of the w3 consortium.

By: Damien

Damien — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:52:27 +0000

Validation does not matter. Try to validate some of the msot prominent sites ont he internet, today. Guess what?- none are valid.

Try amazon.com ..
ebay.com

By: Paul Haine

Paul Haine — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:11:42 +0000

You say that “The need to hover over anything in IE” is an acceptable reason for using invalid CSS. You’re right in that it generates just one validation error, but this error could be avoided by placing the invalid CSS in a separate CSS file, then using a conditional comment ( http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html ) to feed that file only to Internet Explorer. You would still be using invalid CSS, but at least you’d avoid getting a validation error, and I’m sure that the file would come in useful for other IE-only hacks and fixes.

My other point is in regard to the “The need for user-friendly print stylesheets”. Automatically printing images in grayscale is a nice idea, but in my experience browsers aren’t set up to print images or colours anyway; it’s a setting that the user needs to enable. If the user has to enable this in the browser (and in Internet Explorer it’s a fairly well-hidden option), then can’t we assume that the user is also knowledgeable enough to change their print settings? That way, the option to print in colour or not is left up to the user, wheras your
solution takes that option away from them.

These are small things, but I thought them worth mentioning.