Welcome to Web Design Guide
|
|
Designing Web Pages Article
It's very important that you validate the HTML used in your web design
process. This can help you make your website compact and crisp.
This becomes more important if you use an HTML editor for your web design
purpose. Some of these editors have a tendency to bloat up your codes thus
increasing the download time.
The Importance of Validation.
Once you've written a web page, you can upload it to an HTML validator. This
site, run by the web's standards body, will check that your site is valid
('correct') HTML, and give you some idea of how to fix it if it isn't. This is
an essential step in the development of any website – as vital as running your
text through the spell checker – but whenever I recommend it there's always
someone who wonders why it's so important. Well, here's why.
You Know Your Code is Correct.
If your code validates, then it's correct, and therefore very likely to work as
intended on every web browser out there. If you don't validate your pages, then
you might find that people who visit your site with less forgiving browsers see
nothing at all.
Correct code is more likely to display correctly on many different browsers,
because it puts them into their 'standards' mode. If code is even slightly
incorrect, many browsers will use a different way of displaying it, known as
quirks mode, which is designed to handle old and bad HTML, takes a long time and
may make your page end up with errors you didn't expect.
Without web design standards, you end up going back to the bad old days of
having to develop entirely separate web pages for different browsers. Validating
by the standards ensures that all working browsers can view your content – if
they can't, the fault's with them, not with you! Cool justification.
So its vital that you validate your HTML and the web design. This will help you
lot if you do it early rather than redoing your web design at a later stage.
Search Engines Like Valid Pages.
When it comes time for a search engine to add your page to its results, it's
going to have a much easier time understanding the page if it's been validated.
This will often get you a higher ranking in the results, which means free
visitors for you. If your page isn't valid, search engines will often miss
keywords in your pages or not understand your navigation, and may list
nonsensical parts of your code under your site's name in the search results –
not exactly helpful to potential visitors who want to know what your site is
about.
Another factor to take care in your web design strategy. You can't ignore search
engines.
Mobile Devices.
More and more people are accessing the web using mobile devices like mobile
phones and PDAs, and these devices have a lot of trouble with code that isn't
valid. Because they have limited processing power, it would take them a very
long time to try to untangle invalid code – they will simply strip out the
formatting and do the best they can with it. Writing valid HTML lets users with
mobile devices see your pages as you intended.
Disabled People.
Many web design professionals have started paying attention to disabled people.
Many screen readers have come into the market.
And you can't ignore these screen readers any more. Nor you can ignore the
effect of it on your business which means you have to take care of this aspect
also in your web design.
When you write valid code, it becomes much easier to view with things that
aren't web browsers, such as screen readers. Technology for disabled people
doesn't tend to be as forgiving as web browsers, so having valid code is
important when it comes to working with these programs.
Future-Proofing.
Before your code will validate, you need to explicitly say which version of HTML
you had in mind when you created it. This future-proofs your code, as each
version of the standard doesn't change once it's been decided on: a valid XHMTL
1.1 page will always be a valid XHTML 1.1 page, even if everyone else has moved
on to XHTML 5. Once you've validated your site once, you can put it on the web
and be confident that people are going to be able to read it for a long time to
come.
Finding Errors.
Using a validator is an easy and free way to find errors in your web design. Why
not use them especially when it does not cost you a dime.
If there's a mistake in your website's code, validation gives you an easy way to
track it down and fix it. Before validation, people had to test their site after
each change and look carefully to make sure that nothing had gone wrong. Writing
valid code lets you use programs that will examine what you've written and point
at the exact place where the code doesn't validate.
The following is a list of Validators that will assess your web design. These
will help you to eliminate the errors in code and trim your website. Do not
hesitate to use them.
A List of Validators.
Here are a few validators that you can try. Most HTML validators are online, but
there are a few that you can download and use on your own computer.
The W3C validator: http://validator.w3.org/
The WDG validator:
www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator
CSE validator: www.htmlvalidator.com
(downloadable)
As the information we produce in our writing on web design may be utilized by
the reader for informative purposes, it is very important that the information
we provide be true. We have indeed maintained this.
WebTechs validator:
www.webtechs.com/html-val-src
Doctor HTML: www.doctor-html.com
(downloadable)
You might also be interested in visiting the W3C's main site at w3c.org, as well
as the Web Standards Project at
www.webstandards.org
We sincerely hope these validators will help in your web design. Many more
articles on web design craves for your attention on this site. Read them!
|
|
|
Designing Web Pages Best products
Designing Web Pages News
Blueprint for Online Success: Understanding the Fundamentals of ... - MarketingProfs.com (subscription)
Blueprint for Online Success: Understanding the Fundamentals of ... MarketingProfs.com (subscription), CA - When creating a Web site, the individual page names should clearly label the purpose of the page and use your industry's most important keyword phrases ... |
Gilbane Boston 2008 Exhibitor Profiles - MarketWatch
Gilbane Boston 2008 Exhibitor Profiles MarketWatch - Vignette powers some of the world's most extensive, popular and lucrative Web sites. For more information, visit www.vignette.com or e-mail ... |
MedTouch Clients Awarded More Awards: Award-Winning Sites Continue ... - MarketWatch
MedTouch Clients Awarded More Awards: Award-Winning Sites Continue ... MarketWatch - MedTouch delivers web intelligence for healthcare. Whether delivering web sites, online marketing programs, or empowered technology with provable ROI, ... |
Dots Launches New Web Site - MarketWatch
Dots Launches New Web Site MarketWatch - Dots partnered with Denver-based digital advertising agency, Xylem, to design the site and develop an all-encompassing online marketing presence. ... |
How to Use Social Networking Sites for Marketing and PR - New York Times
How to Use Social Networking Sites for Marketing and PR New York Times, United States - AllBusiness.com is a business Web site that provides information and services to small businesses. By AllBusiness.com Give your friends a heads-up on new ... |
Study Says Retailers Need to Improve Online Practices - TMCnet
 HispanicBusiness.com | Study Says Retailers Need to Improve Online Practices TMCnet - According to the study, 49 percent of the retailer's Web sites were satisfactory in design and ease of use rather than excellent in terms of online best ... Video: Online Retailers See Monday As Black Friday Shoppers no longer wary of Web Reasons for Retail Hope |