LVS CLASS HOMEWORK

LESSON ONE - September 5th, 2000

Hmm.. these validators are puzzling stuff. I tried all five online validators listed in the lesson.
So... with Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits loaded in the CD Drive.. I set out to work

For each validator I plugged in my main website, and my main content page.

  1. W3C HTML Validation Service
    • Quite a few errors.. the top "Doctype" line accounted for 5 of them.
    • There were also errors for the HTML line and the meta lines put in by FrontPage.
    • In all.. lots of errors.. including my frameset.
    • Not as easy to read as the others.
    • However.. there IS a CSS validator that will check your CSS for you.
  2. Dr. HTML
    • The 'Doctor' can check a single page.. or an entire site.
    • You can customize the list based upon several tests.. a big plus.
    • The summary is easy to read.. it checks your spelling too!
    • Overall: my favorite. I'll be using this one.
  3. University of Melbourne Validation Service
    • You can pick the level of HTML you want to check against.. plus enter a list of pages to check.
    • Output... if you've got errors.. it will list them line by line.
    • The format is similar to W3C.. but easier to read
    • Like the W3C validator, the Melbourne service picked apart my code.. even though I mostly used FrontPage to compose it.
    • However, you can cut and paste parts of code into the front page to be checked.
  4. WDG HTML Validator
    • Once again, can check one page or the entire site.
    • The error output of the checker will point to your code line by line to pinpoint the errors.
    • For some reason, this validator didn't recognize the opening validator line that Vikki told us we needed.
    • Advantages: has pointers on the front page about why you should use a validator, and other tips.
    • There's also a batch mode, plus you can validate files on your own computer, or by entering HTML directly.
  5. Bobby
    • The first time I used Bobby, it was unavailable.
    • Today, I got thru. I liked the output.. like Dr. HTML.. it was clean and easy to read.
    • Bobby made several suggestions to my code that would make it easier for the disabled to access it.
    • Each explanation was thorough.
    • However.. the Geocities banners will cause a page/site to flunk. This page flunked because of the mandatory banner.

QUIZ ANSWERS

  1. dd
  2. bb
  3. qq
  4. u
  5. z
  6. pp
  7. c
  8. cc
  9. hh
  10. ii
  11. nn
  12. ee
  13. g
  14. j
  15. q, b (I know one of these two are correct)
  16. oo
  17. k
  18. w
  19. r
  20. ff
  21. aa
  22. a
  23. o
  24. x (I went back and forth on that one.. there was another option that I liked)
  25. g
  26. mm
  27. q (this was an educated guess)
  28. i
  29. p
  30. l
  31. s
  32. m
  33. kk
  34. jj
  35. ll
  36. (I left it blank.. but my guess is n)
  37. e
  38. v
  39. f
  40. n
  41. d
  42. h
  43. t
Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4 Lesson 5 Lesson 6