Validome, Web Page Validator

One of the aspects of being a webmaster is to make sure that your web pages are compatible with the most popular web browsers. This requires some tweaking and hacks, especially if Internet Explorer 6 comes into the picture. Validating web pages is just one aspect of this. Most browsers handle invalid elements well so that the page is displayed to the user even though it may not be displayed exactly as the web developer has intended.

Website validators like the W3C Markup Validation Service check a web page for validation errors. Webmasters use these services to correct validation errors on their websites.

Here is an example why validation is important. About a year ago I noticed that the RSS feed of Ghacks was throwing an XML error in Internet Explorer 8. This was caused by a single character in one of the latest articles that was not escaped (meaning instead of writing the character & directly one would have to use & instead.

That single character caused problems in the feed delivery, and I had to work longer than usual to get it fixed. Consequences of invalid code are not always that drastic, but it exemplifies the impact that it can have on a website.

Validome is another website validation service. It is a bit stricter when it comes to validating pages. It can happen that a page passes as a XHTML 1.0 Transitional document in the W3C validation, and fails in the Validome validation.

Another difference between the two validation engines is that Validome supports verifications of local and remote documents. Users can either enter an url in the form on the site, or upload a document from their local computer system.

Extended settings are offered to check the document with a specific user agent or language.

A click on Validate performs the validation of the document. Errors are displayed directly.

The service lists the line and column of the validation error, the error position and an explanation of the error. This is often enough to fix the issue in the document.

Validome is an excellent alternative to the W3C validation service. It is usually enough to use Validome since it appears to be stricter in the validation. Most webmasters on the other hand will probably use both services anyway.

Advertisement