Hvassing.com

The arguments for validation according to the W3C Markup Validation Service and the W3C specifications are many and strong. The counter arguments are not as many, and maybe not as strong, but are there nonetheless. So why then doesn't most sites validate?

This site does not validate. I know. Chances are that it will never validate either. Not because I'm not able to make it validate or because I'm too lazy, it's all to do with WordPress and how I write my posts. From time to time it happens that I write a paragraph-element inside a code-element, or omit the trailing slash when including an image. These are minor mistakes that breaks the site according to the W3C Markup Validation Service.

There's not much I can say about this topic that Mike Davidson haven't already said. He points out something really important in his essay about why his site isn't valid according to the W3C Markup Validation Service.

this site renders my entire domain XHTML 1.0 Non-Compliant. Invalid. Erroneous. Whatever you want to call it. Here are the various crimes this one line of code commits:

• An ampersand is not properly encoded
• An alt tag is missing
• An attribute called “myfavoritetag” is made up
• An attribute is missing quotes
• A script tag is missing its type and language attributes
• A non-closing tag is missing its trailing slash
• A tag is upper case… gasp!

-- Mike Davidson, http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2004/06/march-to-your-own-standard

The point here is that it would take Mike only a few seconds to fix these errors. Heck, he even added them himself through using his "Invalidator". The fact that Mike's site doesn't validate doesn't make it a bad site, neither does it suggest that he doesn't care about disabled users and accessibility. I'm guessing that Mike knows how to write valid code, maybe even better than most site owners out there, but he has chosen to make his site invalid on purpose. Why?

Because it doesn't matter.

However, if your site only works with one browser and is created using browser specific, invalid code then it matters. If it's impossible for people with even the slightest disability to navigate through your site, then it matters even more.

I've used the W3C Markup Validation Service quite a lot when learning my way around HTML and CSS. It made me appreciate a well-formed and structured document, as a result of heavy use I am now able to write perfectly valid code according to the Markup Validation Service. However, every now and then I forget to add a trailing slash to a non-closing element and the result is that the validation of the site breaks. At least according to the XHTML 1.1-specification.

The point is that if your entire design is perfectly flawless, the site behaves as it should and the accessibility for even disabled users has been taken care of, the validation doesn't really matter. For some users it might be a sign of good standard when a site has the "Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional"-emblem. However, as Martin Bekkelund writes in his post "Validation buttons are not for the common webpage", the people who

finds validation interesting knows how to validate a webpage without the validation buttons. [...] the validation buttons are signs of good craftsmanship, you may say. They sure are! However, it’s my opinion that neither validation buttons nor validation links belongs to the common webpage

-- Martin Bekkelund, http://notebook.bekkelund.net/2005/05/05/validation-buttons/

I totally agree! If you're a novice user chances are that

• Don't know what valid (X)HTML means
• You don't know what HTML is (and why should you? Let other people worry about that)
• You don't care

Considering all this, it really doesn't matter whether or not your site validates. What you should be more concerned about is what the W3C recommend you do on their Quality Assurance-page, but most of all you should listen to your users on how to improve your site.