new w3c validator beta

By anders pearson 28 Aug 2003

Terje Bess has <a href=”http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2003Aug/0105.html”>announced</a> a new <a href=”http://validator.w3.org:8001/“>beta version</a> of the venerable <a href=”http://validator.w3.org/“>w3c validator</a>.

the main improvements include more understandable, verbose error messages, and a ‘fussy mode’ that will warn about things that, while strictly legal, are known to cause problems in common browsers.

both are pretty cool. the improved error messages are <em>very</em> cool. the <a href=”http://www.webstandards.org/“>WaSP</a> is currently focusing on developer education about standards. one of the big hurdles developers have faced when trying to move to standards based markup is that you had to already be an HTML expert before some of the validator’s error messages made any sense. this change should go a long way toward fixing that and making it easier for developers to get started with standards.

if you have some free time, go <a href=”http://validator.w3.org:8001/“>test it out</a> or submit suggestions for further improvements to the error messages.

Tags: web standards validator w3c