My W3C Validation Woes

It’s not easy to have a standards compliant Web site. Besides, what difference does it make? It doesn’t change the look of a Web page, does it? It seems pointless thinking about validation as another step in the project management process. It’s clearly a time-consuming procedure, not to mention that it takes a lot of effort examining a problematic code which when altered, could oftentimes destroy a Web page’s layout. So it’s not surprising that many W3C validation attempts lead to frustration.

I spent a whole night fixing my blog’s W3C validation errors. Nine errors started it all with the DTD being the first one. The DTD alone consumed more than a couple of hours of my time. I could not believe that the DTD validation error would affect all of the modules, except for the header. It was like getting back to step two coming from the second to the last stage. I ended up recreating the background and re-adjusting the margin and padding. It was indeed frustrating… and laborious. The second validation error came from an <a href> tag that was placed in between DIVs. I wanted the whole header DIV to be clickable to allow for easier home page navigation but apparently, the W3C validator didn’t allow that. It was another I couldn’t believe this! moment, considering that it was the code suggested by the WordPress support site. Fortunately, there was an alternate code provided by the Default/Kubrick theme’s author. The rest of the validation errors were quite easy to fix maybe because I already got used to the not so helpful hints that the W3C validator provided in the previous two. Debugging the first page already cost me a lot of time and somehow exhausted my logical abilities, only to find out later on that there was another validation error. It was in the search module this time. The W3C validator warned of ID’s being used multiple times in a single document. I knew it wasn’t allowed so I quickly changed them to classes. Once again, the layout self-destructed and another figure-it-out game commenced. It turned out that the three ID’s and the stylesheet need to be changed. At last, all of the validation errors were fixed. I should’ve called for a toast but daylight seemed to have spoiled the event.

The W3C validation process gave me a beating. It showed me how harsh it could become if I were to code my design based on my own will. On the other hand, the W3C validator taught me an important lesson. Now I won’t just code and leave the rest to my design. I’ll make sure that validation will already be part of the process. My conviction in building standards compliant Web pages has never been as strong. If it would take a beating to let one learn a good practice, then it is a benefit that one should understand early on.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 5:05 and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.