W3c

WEBIAN

Senior Member
Hi guys, I'm totally puzzled about W3C. Do you think it's important to make your HTML 100% valid? There are plenty of authoritative sites out there that don't validate, so that's probably a sign that it's not so important (?)

Also it seems that if I embed a Youtube video in a valid page, the page stops validating (The W3C Markup Validation Service ). Did that happen to any of you by any chance? if so, did you manage to fix it? How? Etc...
 
It used to be a big deal. Now I think it's becoming less and less important because HTML5 doesn't officially validate yet (there are some unofficial validators out there though). Unfortunately, I think people are using HTML5 as an excuse to not write valid code, even when their site is written in plain XHTML.

Some people say it takes longer to write code that validates, but then you're just doing it wrong. Having valid code ensures that your site is future-proof for at least a few more years in all major browsers.

I try to write valid code, but some of my stuff needs to be ported to Sharepoint (a cms which I find quite complicated) and is mainly viewed in ie6, which makes things considerably more difficult. I haven't fully embraced HTML5 myself but will be looking into it a little more on my own time and projects.
 
You should be able to design most basic web pages with 100% valid html and css. Anything that isn't standard xhtml / css will throw up and error or warning, but sometimes this is necessary depending on what your building. The main thing is if your web pages are tested and working. As you mentioned a lot of big websites don't validate. It can be necessary to do a lot of 'hacks' to get sites to work consistently across all browsers and hacks don't tend to validate! So dont be lazy when it comes to writing code, write it well and just keep an eye on validation warnings and errors you get and fix the ones you can, but the main thing is to get what your building to work across browsers.

HTML5 isnt even finalised yet, so browsers will interpret pages in their own way, certainly for things like html5 video!
 
IMO its one of the most important thing's. Just because html5 only has a BETA validator it does not mean it shouldn't be valid. I always work to a STRICT DocType. If other peoples websites dont validate then thats there problem dont make the same mistake by not having a valid markup
 
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