Is It Important to Validate?

on the other hand I think it is not important but rather a physiological thing.

Hehe whooami – maybe he really did mean physiological? You’ve seen people have road rage, this could be the first documented example of code rage! I have actually seen peers of mine in the past get seriously mad at messy code… this might just be an extension of that.

There is an informed body of opinion which says that validation is overrated. My view is that whether a blog validates exactly or not – it is a very useful aid in development, and fault finding. The trick is to view it as a friend- not as a hurdle.

Amulet,

you “sound” like you want to hear that it doesn’t.

I’ll restate my own experience.

Except for VERY minor issues, my own site does NOT display differently in different browsers. Unless of course, you include browsers that dont support a certain facet of some CSS that I have used.

There is one safari issue that I am aware of that has nothing to do with validation.

Firefox is forgiving – far more forgiving than IE. Thats precisely WHY there are hundreds of posts here where someone’s site looks great in it, but not in *some* version of IE.

I myself came across an archive page just the other day where a div issue was causing the dreaded “dropped sidebar” on my site.

I hadn’t previously seen it, because I use Firefox as my primary browser.

Point is, how many people viewed that page in IE looked at that and went, “ugh, I cant read this” and left?

In the end, everyone is going to spend as much time as _they want_ honing their site and their skills. If you dont want a valid site, that dont do the necessary work — and yes, it IS work. I, personally, find it to be very gratifying work, though.

One of the reasons for validation is browser inconsistency. Now it is perfectly true that a valid site will not necessarily render correctly across platform, but valid mark up gives us a firm, consistent, measureable and well understood baseline. We can then apply known techniques for the various browsers within a constant framework of valid markup. Once we deviate outside this framework we are in completely unknown territory. It is not sensible to complain about what the browser is doing (or not) while serving it unrecogniseable tag soup. Validation is our friend. Incidentally to any one who has the proper tools fitted, it is a simple process to validate as you go along. I do not agree with an earlier comment that Firefox is forgiving. It’s not. But it’s not meant to be. That is a good thing. When IE encounters an error anything can happen. Although that might seem useful it has resulted in the mess that generally prevails on the internet. I find it very difficult keeping abreast of all the known variations in browsers. It is only possible at all when those variations are stated as behaviorial deviations in the face valid mark up. Otherwise there is no reference point. Hope that makes sense. 🙂

The worst reason to validate is because you have been made to feel that *you should do it*.

I’m like you whooami, I view everything in FF and sometimes forget to view it in IE. I’ve also had that sinking feeling when I thought everything was ok, only to see it a week or two later in IE. !@#$

Root is right – FF is not forgiving, and again, it’s good that it isn’t. We code consistently well, view it in FF, validate it and we’re happy that is looks as we wanted it to and validates. Sadly, we then have to repeat the whole process for browsers that consistently don’t do things the way code was designed to.