I was browsing the W3C Markup Validation Service entry on Wikipedia awhile back, and came across a very interesting little thing they did. They had the idea of checking a list of some of the most common or popular websites on the internet such as Google, Apple, AOL, MSN, etc.
What I saw back then was relatively surprising to me. What I saw today when I went back to that entry on Wikipedia was even more shocking as they updated their list by nearly double and only had one website to add to the ones that came back valid…
The above picture was the old snapshot that was taken off the W3C Wikipedia page. If I had to say, I would say it’s around a year old. Give or take a month or three.
The above image is the new snapshot taken off the W3C Wikipedia page. One of the first things I noticed was Google.com didn’t validate, and I can’t see why. I mean, the simplicity of the Google.com website, its main index, is incredibly simple with an image, a few lists, and a text area form.
I was even more surprised about Twitter and Apple not validating to the W3C standards.
In the article on Wikipedia concerning the W3C Markup Validation Service, it wasn’t stated whether the above websites were scanned for valid XHTML in Transitional Markup, Strict Markup or else. My best bet however is that they scanned these websites for Valid Transitional XHTML, as that gives the website being scanned a bit of head way, but certainly doesn’t make it a piece of absolute cake to validate.
Read about the W3C Markup Validation Service at Wikipedia
Visit the W3C Markup Validation Service
I also highly recommend reading the Help and FAQ for the Markup Validator as it answers most fundamental questions nearly anyone would have about what exactly the W3C Markup Validation Service is.
As defined by their very own FAQ..
” The Markup Validator is a free service by W3C that helps check the validity of Web documents.
“Most Web documents are written using markup languages, such as HTML or XHTML. These languages are defined by technical specifications, which usually include a machine-readable formal grammar (and vocabulary). The act of checking a document against these constraints is called validation, and this is what the Markup Validator does.
“Validating Web documents is an important step which can dramatically help improving and ensuring their quality, and it can save a lot of time and money Validation is, however, neither a full quality check, nor is it strictly equivalent to checking for conformance to the specification.”
Continue reading the official about page.
