What is W3C Validation and Why it is Important?

Many of us don’t really know how useful W3C Validator is for a web document. The basic function of the validator program is to check the degree of accuracy in the technical language of the code provided within the web document. The World Wide Web Consortium created the Mark up Validator for this very purpose of checking especially HTML and XHTML documents to ensure a high quality product.

When web documents are displayed through web browsers, it is very important to know how much of tolerance level the web browsers have towards certain types of errors. This helps to understand the syntactical corrections that has to be made for validation by the W3C Mark up Validator.

w3c-validator

Why W3C Validator?

  • Validation of websites with the help of W3C Mark up Validator is useful to debug errors that may be harmful for the document in terms of browser display.
  • Removing validation errors helps in layout and stylization of websites as they do not have to come across scripting bugs.
  • It necessitates the conformance to web standards.
  • Validation which is carried out accurately by the W3C Validator assures healthy professionalism with enhancement in quality.
  • Helps you to conform to different accessibility standards.
  • Preaches best coding practices.
  • Makes sure your web pages or mobile pages render properly irrespective of different browser versions and different operating systems.
  • Gives much credibility to remain in compliance with unknown future platforms.
  • Sometimes helps you find security loop holes in your scripts.

Points to be noted

  • Validation of the web content often involves difficult debugging processes which are very cumbersome.
  • The modern error correction software and in built codes within browsers manage to auto correct invalid content in certain cases which tends to make validation come across as a useless process to some.
  • In some cases though it can point out technical snags, validators often miss out on viewing the bigger picture within a web document.
w3c validator error

W3C Specifications

  • The W3C Mark up Validator has the capability to process mark up languages like HTML using HTML 4.0 and different XHTML language family, MathML, , SMIL, SGML, XML DTD, SVG 1.0, and SVG 1.1 and their mobile profiles as well.
  • Validation under the W3C Mark up Validator does not only follow the W3C advised mode of validation, but also conforms to the ISO standards.
  • It provides various online tools which help in validation of documents which might be CSS, P3P etc.
  • The HTML Tidy option is useful for cleaning HTML pages.
  • Validome helps in validation of documents in different languages.

W3C validation services include various interesting options in the form of Site Valet which provides useful tools in taking care of your websites and monitoring it for the required changes. A Real Validator is another interesting checker which scans the documents as the HTML syntax checker for windows.

Pricing

The best thing about the W3C validator is that it is completely free of charge which makes it all the more easily available for the process of validation.

Conclusion

W3C validator is an extremely useful tool which is neither too expensive to use nor it is very complicated. It assures a high quality to the web document as it validates it by making it free of any technical errors. Validation helps in checking whether a page is reliable which can be easily done online through the website http://validator.w3.org/.

About the author

Nitin Agarwal

A blogger, tech evangelist, YouTube creator, books lover, traveler, thinker, and believer of minimalist lifestyle.