TIPS - CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout - page 72

VALIDATE!
h is might be old hat to you. You might be wondering why I would waste precious ink and
tree pulp on so obvious a topic. And yet, how ot en do you actually validate? Once at the end
of the project, or all the way through?
While I'm not telling you to validate every time you hit “Save” on the document you're
writing, it is a good idea to get into the habit of validating at regular intervals as you go
through a page build. h at way, you catch problems before they infect the whole page
structure.
h ere are a few good validators out there for both HTML and CSS. In the HTML sphere,
probably the most widely used validator is the one provided by the W3C itself and located at
validator.w3.org (see Figure 3-1). Its CSS-centric cousin, sited at jigsaw.w3.org/
css-validator/ , is equally popular.
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Figure 3-1: The W3C's HTML validator.
What if you're stuck developing behind a i rewall, or do all your development on your laptop
with a locally run Web server? h en use the “Validate local” features in Firebug and other
developer tools. As long as you can browse the Web, then you can validate any page you're
viewing, whether or not the page you're viewing can be publicly browsed. (I pretty much
always use “validate local,” even when the page is on a public site, just to keep in the habit of
using it.)