"Validation of your website code assures that your content will be viewable in popular website browsers for Mac, PC, or Text reading browsers for the blind."
Check if your code validates
To check validation of your website coding against W3C standards visit this page: http://lovejoy.w3.org/ Simply enter in your website address and click "Validate URI"
What were your results?
If your site is validated coding you will get the eye pleasing blue bar stating your site meet all the requirements and rules of quality HTML. Additionally you may want to check your back pages to be sure all your pages meet W3C standards.
If your site failed to meet W3C standards then you will see the dreaded red bar telling you the bad news. W3C is generous enough to provide you the specifics of your errors below the red bar though. Reading through each error and correcting them one at a time will get you validated. Bad news is sometimes fixing obvious errors can result in new errors. The task can be daunting to say the least, but worth it in the end!
Additional note:
There are some cases where your site will generate other error types. Some are generic and others produce a fatal error. These are generated because a DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current markup languages and without such a declaration it is impossible to validate this document.
Does Validation Really Matter?
Validation is important without question or we would not stand by the importance of clean coding.
It comes down to usability for humans and software period.
To support my point I want to start off with a question. Would you buy or live in a house which the foundation did not meet building codes? I would hope not, or you would be putting the users of that house in some sort of danger.
Humans and Validation
Human users are picky in how they access information. If you don’t provide consistency, or you cause their web browser crash then they won’t return. You have to build your site solid from the start, and provide them a safe and accessible structure for them to enter your website.
We depend on web browsers to solve our ability to view dirty coded websites. When a site is not accessible by a browser such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera we put the blame on the company who created the browser software. Actually the blame should go to the website owner. Browser software engineers follow the W3C guidelines as close as possible in order to produce a quality product. We can’t depend on browsers to resolve buggy websites, but we can help them along as website owners by meeting the programming standards set by W3C and the industry.
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