Posted by Chaddy2222 on 10/19/06 06:35

Albert Wiersch wrote:
> "Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:4pnhi1Fit9uhU1@individual.net...
> >>
> >> I don't see how that makes sense. I think a better analogy would be:
> >> "That's like saying toothbrushes are great tools that should always be
> >> used but they're not perfect because they can't guarantee that all plaque
> >> was removed and that your mouth is perfectly clean."
> >
> > No, because while plaque removal is one of the goals of brushing one's
> > teeth, the features whose absence you consider to be imperfections in
> > the validators have nothing to do with validation. "Validation", no
> > matter how many times you say otherwise, has a specific definition in
> > this context because it's defined in the specification by virtue of
> > which this context even exists. The information provided by your tool,
> > no matter how useful it may be, falls outside of the purview of
> > validation.
>
> Well, it depends on your definition of validation and why people validate...
> MOST people validate because they are writing HTML and XHTML to be viewed
> with browsers by visitors who come to their site. One of the purposes of
> validating is to help make sure their documents do not contain issues that
> would affect their visitors and negatively affect how their page could be
> displayed. They want their site to display as intended. So how can you say
> that validation is not intended to make sure that a document has some level
> of correctness which carries over to actually displaying the document in a
> browser?
The main perpus of validating your HTML code useing the proper SGML or
XML passer is to make sure there are no actual errors in the code.

>
>
>If you are only creating documents so that they "validate" according to an
> SGML validator (or dare I say HTML Validator) and you could care less about
> how the pages actually display, then I suppose what you say makes sense. But
> most people write and validate pages to be seen by real-world browsers. They
> don't validate only to pass a strict "test". There's a purpose to validation
> which carries over to displaying pages correctly in browsers.
>
It's not actaully the job of HTML to determan how a page displayes on a
browser, that's what CSS is for, so yes going on what you are saying,
your HTML needs to be properly validated to make sure that the CSS can
then work properly (as intended) and to make sure the CSS works
correctly you validate that as well.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesign.cjb.cc

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