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Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 03/18/06 13:46
On Sat, 18 Mar 2006, xyZed wrote:
> I have Dreamweaver 8 and it's set to validate XHTML 1.0
> Transitional but it misses lots of errors (compared to W3C
> validator)
I'm not personally familiar with the details of DW. The term
"Validator" in an SGML/XML context has a very precise meaning, you
know, but is often abused.
I just searched for the term validator in conjunction with dreamweaver
8, and the only references I found seemed to be about an
"accessibility validator". That would seem to me to be doubly
misleading, since accessibility isn't something that can be
mechanically "validated" - but to pursue that might be a digression
away from what you're really interested in.
Are we really talking about the same thing?
> For example (and this is only on one page) it hasn't picked up my
> erroneous use of more than one "id" element, and missed a "end tag
> for "img" omitted but OMITTAG NO was specified". Plus it misses a
> "required attribute "alt" not specified" and even an extra </div>
> where a div was never opened
If this claims to be an HTML validator (in the technical sense), then
on your evidence it has to be a lie.
> I've been relying on dreamweaver's validator which is why so many
> mistakes have crept in as I've modified, checked an uploaded. I just
> wondered if it was known that Dreamweavers validator is useless?
It may well be that, like the improperly-named CSE "validator", it
carries out some useful checks - if only one knows what those checks
are - and what are their limitations.
> It's supposed to be a professional tool.
Most "professional" web pages are invalid HTML, you know. Some of us
think this is a bad idea, however (quite apart from it being a WAI
violation in itself).
The mere fact that you use tool X to compose your pages, does not rule
out the possibility of using tools Y and Z to check the quality of the
result in various ways, if you so choose. In fact, I'd recommend it,
since, if tool X can't or won't produce valid HTML, what possible
guarantee could you get that an HTML verifier from the same house
would be able to reveal its faults?
Certainly my colleague who makes pages with DW does not omit to submit
them to the W3C validator, as well as to their CSS checker, and repair
the results; as well as to a third party accessibility verifier, and
giving due consideration to its alerts. If working on a larger scale,
one can install this or equivalent software locally.
While researching this reply to you, google suggested
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=11583.msg81830
But that was about the DW *accessibility* so-called *validator*, not
an HTML syntax validator, so this may or may not be what you're on
about.
hth
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