HTML Validator

Best software?

[notbob]

I don't seem to have any of the SE bots spider my site other then Yahoo.

One of the suggestions received was to check the site with an HTML Validator.

Could someone recommend their preferred validator.

Thank you

Jason

[D_Blackwell]

W3C [validator.w3.org]

If you've never validated before, be prepared for the possiblity of tons of errors. On the plus side, most will turn out to be the same error, repeated many times. Also, most will be easily repaired.

Be sure that you declare a DTD, and specify character encoding.

[bruhaha]

Check out CSE HTML Validator

[James_Lucas]

I agree with D_Blackwell, W3C's Validator is the best ;)

I personally wouldn't use anything else.

- James.

[rocknbil]

If you edit with Macromedia HomeSite, it has many levels of configurable validators built right into the program, and additionally has CodeSweeper, HTML Tidy and several other cleanup applications to debug your pages before validating them online.

The great thing about the HomeSite validators is you can set the level of compatibility. For example, if you're just updating an old site and the customer doesn't want to pay to bring it up to at least 4.01 transitional (they seldom do, if they can't **see** the difference, in their minds there **is** no difference) you can set the validator level to html 3.2.

Pre-validating is a good step, one that saves you time and saves w3c bandwidth. A time may come when that validator will no longer be "free."