Why Validate?

Validation is a practice sorely underused in modern web design, a fact that is unfortunate when coupled with the fact that most modern businesses rely on a solid web presence to enhance their bottom line. When a business creates a webpage with the sole purpose of driving customers toward their company, both their placement within a search engine's results, and the compatibility of their website with the hodgepodge of browsers and computers currently available, is crucial for survival. Validation ensures this survival, and instills the proper ethos of effective coding practice.

While validation is crucial on a broad scale, it is not imperative that every single webpage validate. It is however important that the designer understand precisely why a page does not validate, if it is not required to. Pages that are databased are currently not able to pass validation, and thus aren't typically indexed by the search engine spiders. The main players in the search engine race are taking broad steps to fix this problem, as large sections of the internet are in the form of databased pages; for this reason, a keen knowledge of the mechanics of page validation is imperative. It is also important to note that validators currently do not validate script, just the script's relative placement within the HTML. The same proper coding practices should apply to script, just as they do to HTML, as a matter of convention.

Shortcuts are some of the most common reasons for a webpage not validating, and proper formal coding can eliminate these problems before they crop up. Where a quick kludge might seem worthwhile, proper CSS coding and the use of legal, proofed code will nearly always result in pages which are largely free of problems from the beginning.

With this knowledge in mind, the designer can begin studying the fundamentals of proper, formal code and the methods of proper validation, topics which will be touched upon in later weeks.