Helpful Hints in Using Validator

http://validator.w3.org/file-upload.html

I strongly suggest validating the code BEFORE you upload it to your webspace at Geocities. When you get to the validator page:

Use the "browse" button to find where your file is stored on your system
If necessary, use the drop down list arrows and choose "(detect automatically)" for the Document and Character Type.
You should also click to put a check in the box for "Show source input." This will show your code with line numbers to help you recognize the errors you may have from the validator's output.
Click the "Validate this document" button.

If you validate your page AFTER you upload it to Geocities, the process is slightly different. You will:

Type in the URL of your web page in the textbox provided.
Choose (detect automatically) for Character and Document Type.
Put a check in the Option for "Show Source"
Click the "Validate this page" button.

Because Geocities adds script code to your page, there will be many error messages associated with that code. You can ignore any error messages associated with the Geocities code that appears in your file when you have it uploaded to Geocities.

To simplify using the validator, check your CODE carefully for mandatory XHTML coding:

Be sure your head section at the top of your document contains the proper elements. If there are errors in the head section of the code, the validator may refuse to check the code. If you have copied and pasted the code from the project instructions, these elements should be okay!

Every document sent to the validator must have:

an appropriate DocType statement, (XHTML Transitional for this course)
attribute for the html namespace in the opening html tag, and
a character encoding meta tag.

Examples of common errors:

If you forget to include the closing </head> tag before the opening <body> tag, the validator will report MANY errors in the code below even if the missing closing head tag is the only true error on the page.
If you don't include the <title> tag, the validator will not validate the page.
If you forget a closing tag, the validator will report elements after that to be invalid.
If you omit the value for an attribute, the validator will complain about attributes being "minimized."
If you put block elements inside other elements, it may see them as invalid and then every element after that may be considered as an error.

When you send your code to the validator, look at the FIRST error that it lists......try to fix it. If the code it says there is an error in appears correct, look at the code ABOVE the one with the supposed error. Many times, an invalid code will make every code AFTER it seem invalid to the validator. Fix one error at a time in Notepad, save it, go back to the validator, use the back button to return to the browse button, reload the filename and revalidate the code.

Sample error messages and what they mean:

FATAL ERROR No DOCTYPE specified!
I could not parse this document, because it does not include a DOCTYPE Declaration. A DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current markup languages and without such a declaration it is impossible to validate this document.

(This will occur if you have a typo somewhere in your DOCTYPE statement. You should always copy and paste the DOCTYPE statement from a reliable source!)

Error statement:
Line 16, column 6: end tag for "head" which is not finished (explain...).
</head>

( You look at your <head> tags and see that they are done correctly....and wonder why is it giving you this message about the head tag. This will occur if you forget to put in a <title> tag in your head section of your page. Even though the omitted <title> tag is the problem, the validator comments on it by saying that the head element isn't finished. That means that it is missing a required element, like the title tag. So, in this case, you would have to look at codes ABOVE the head tag to find the error.)

Error statement:
Line 15, character "<" is the first character of a delimiter but occurred as data

(This comment will appear if you forget the closing quote around the value for an attribute. For example, if you have this tag: <h1 align="center>
When you forget to close the quote after an attribute value, the next element in the page will be an error because the < starts a new code and you can't have a new code until you end the code before it....)

Error statement:
Line 21, column 37: document type does not allow element "h1" here; missing one of "object", "applet", "map", "iframe", "button", "ins", "del" start-tag

(This comment will appear if you forget the closing slash on a closing tag. For example, if you have this code: <h1>Whatever text you Want<h1>.
No code after this will be correct because you need the closing slash in the </h1> tag to END the code.)

Error statement:
Line 32, column 26: value of attribute "noshade" cannot be "true"; must be one of "noshade" (explain...).
<hr noshade="true" />

(This comment will appear if you use "true" as a value for the noshade attribute in a horizontal rule. This is shown as a valid value in the w3schools website and it does make your horizontal rules show as solid lines, but the validator wants you to use the value of "noshade" for the noshade attribute. So.......the code would need to be written as the following to validate correctly:
<hr noshade="noshade" />)

Just like a spell-checker, the validator will not find ALL errors, only syntax errors for following the rules of XHTML. For example, if you give the horizontal rule a value of width="200%", it is an inappropriate value because it will make a line across the page that requires the user to scroll left and right to view the whole page. Nobody likes to do that! It will not be considered invalid by the validator because it follows coding rules for enclosing quotes around a percentage value for the width attribute. Also, the validator will let you use <hr / > and <br /> without the space before the slash because for XHTML rules those are correct. However, I will require that you include the space before the slash to be backwards compatible with old browsers. You still have to look over your code after the validator completes its evaluation!

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