False Advertising?

Using W3C icon when pages don't validate?

[webmstr]

I had a client send me an email yesterday saying she found an awesome site and would like to incorporate some of it's ideas. I went to it, and noticed that the W3C icon was on it. So out of curiosity I clicked it, and low and behold. The page is no where near validation. So I went to the creator of the site, and they are advertising this compliance, and none of their portfolio sites nor their own will validate. Not one single page. This to me is really wrong. Especially since I am trying soooo hard to get my sites to validate so I can use the logo on my pages. I take alot of pride in being able to use it if I succeed in getting my pages validated. How do you handle this kind of thing? Isn't there something that can be done?

[physics]

I would think this could only be seen as negative advertising for that company/site. People who know what W3C validation is and care will probably click on the icon like you did and get angry. People who don't know what W3C validation is couldn't care less ... they may as well put an icon that says "Certified Cool Site by the Happy Funn Internet Foundation" for all the difference it will make ;)

[twist]

I know how you feel. I see this all the time. Not sure why they do it, maybe to give the illusion. Bad break for them if someone clicks on it and they get big red letters saying "This page does NOT validate".

[RammsteinNicCage]

On one of my school's webpages, there is a valid xhtml button, but when I clicked on it, a couple of errors returned. The page itself hadn't been updated since 2003, but it did have recent news on it, probably pulled in from some database and that happened to be where the errors were. So, although the webmaster of that page did a good job, the webmaster that is updating the news is doing a bad job and it could reflect on the good guy. :(

Jennifer

[jessejump]

True Validation is its own reward. It's for the site author.

[twist]

I use the "HTML Validator" Firefox extension to check my pages. Since my pages are designed to validate, if I make a mistake updating some code, the extension will give me a warning. I find this is the best reason to validate, it makes catching little errors very easy. Errors that might not show up in the browser your currently using and would go unnoticed without the validator.

You can also set the "HTML Validator" extension to ignore items on a page. I tell it to ignore the ads, like google, that wont validate. It also allows me to ignore certain lines of code, for example, if I use flash on a page, I tell it to ignore the flash code which allows me to see if the rest of the page validates. Even the W3C validator can't do that.

People sticking validation images on their pages that don't validate are completely missing the real reason to validate in the first place.