Are We Still Arguing About Validation?
As someone who has been teaching HTML for over a decade, I have recollections of students (authoring in Notepad) in total panic because they forgot to close their </table>s, and thus Netscape 3 would deliver a blank page (Draconian error handling has a history too) – I also remember that they only made that mistake once, and never forgot it after that.
Let’s put aside un-escaped ampersands – it’s really too bad that this particular rule exists – but also remember that in all flavors of html going back to HTML 2 the requirement for escaped ampersands existed, so blame it in part on later scripting languages rather than HTML; however outside of that particular conflict, why should we, in 2009, accept second best? (We could relax that particualr rule in HTML5 and then still demand validation)
In the early days of the web, all we were doing was marking up text, but today (especially with the advent of HTML5) we are building web applications: sophisticated and complex interactive designs and tools that leverage all sorts of content and content negotiation. How can we on one hand aspire to a “One Web” ideal and yet at the same time accept whatever effluent comes washing down the pipes and hope that it will work? Why should HTML5 (and compliant browsers) need to spend so much time on silly error handling (as opposed to critical fails), when the simpler answer would be – get it right or it simply won’t work? That this statement is heretical to many is a complete mystery to me – why shouldn’t we expect that for it to work you must get it right? That friends is the way of the world.
I would venture to guess that the majority of pedestrian user ‘web content’ today is not being hand coded in Notepad, but rather via authoring systems/CMSes such as Drupal or Wordpress (like this blog) or WYSIWYG tools that handle much if not most of the back-end code beyond the reach of the uninitiated. Why shouldn’t we expect these tools to get it right? And more importantly, why can’t these tools help authors correct their mistakes before ‘publishing’? We have no problem integrating spell checkers into virtually every authoring tool imaginable, yet somehow the notion that we can’t do the same for syntax validation in the same tools seems somehow unachievable of untenable? Why? I don’t know – frankly the rules really aren’t that hard to learn or apply.
As for ‘professional’ web developers – are you really PROUD that you can skate by generating sub-optimal work and can get away with it? How would you feel if your PROFESSIONAL car mechanic did sub-optimal work? Or your PROFESSIONAL plumber? Or your PROFESSIONAL payroll clerk? I’m truly confused – why the resistance to being the best that you can be? Why hide behind “…if it renders on screen that’s good enough?” Is it really?
I think that we need to find a middle ground, one that gets beyond un-escaped ampersands (which BTW flags as an error and not a failure in the W3C validator), but one that insists that if you want to be an author then good grammar and proper spelling is a baseline requirement, and that valid code be a minimal expectation. After all, all other related ‘languages’ used in today’s modern web environment require some level of validation: CSS rules must be properly declared, and the cascade is important; PHP and ASP syntax is critical for your app to work (“error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE” anyone?), and more esoteric development platforms (Ruby on Rails, JavaStruts, etc.) also have relatively strict authoring requirements if you want something to render on screen. The notion that tag soup in HTML is acceptable goes against the precedent of all other CS languages out there today.
Why? Because that’s the way it used to be? That’s hardly a good excuse in my opinion: you used to also be able to smoke in airplanes, seatbelts in cars were optional, and corporal punishment in primary schools (complete with nuns with rulers wacking knuckles) were all considered ‘the norm’. Today, we know better, and have modified our society to reflect this knowledge. I posit that, with the move to HTML5, now is a great time to up our game as far as validation is concerned: it will help deliver the “One Web” faster, more efficiently, more predictably and with a lower user-agent overhead. You want tag soup? Here, use this DTD:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>
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People born in the Year of the Pig are chivalrous and gallant. Whatever they do, they do with all their strength. For Boar Year people, there is no left or right and there is no retreat. They have tremendous fortitude and great honesty. They don't make many friends but they make them for life, and anyone having a Boar Year friend is fortunate for they are extremely loyal. They don't talk much but have a great thirst for knowledge. They study a great deal and are generally well informed.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Are we still arguing about validation? That we are. Approaching it from an accessibility point of view, a validation failure is an indicator (but not in itself proof) that a site may have problems with accessibility.
If a site validates, it looks more professional. Yes, yes, and yes.
But then you get situations where stuff like embed is non-standard, non-valid, but is better for accessibility. So should you use embed? Yes.
Validation is good, and if you can validate it’s an indicator that your site will be better. But I’d rather have a site with well structured semantic HTML with presentation, content and behaviour separated nicely (only with a couple of unencoded ampersands) than a tag soup page which just happens to validate…
So yes, I’d say we are still having this argument. Because while validation is good, there are times when a failure to validate may be justified. That’s a valid reason for the argument continuing.
Unfortunately in practice the main reason appears to be that people can’t be bothered to take the time to put together a few basic checks when putting their site together and don’t adhere to any professional standards. And that, I can completely agree with you on, is wrong.
October 8th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Well-said John!
Have you see any valid arguments for status quo? I’ve only seen resistance to validating markup based on the argument that it will break the Web since current content on the Web is not valid. It’s like a deliberate attempt to ignore the fact that validating markup should only apply to future content written to a future spec.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:18 am
One of the key arguments you have towards validation being mandatory is that most content is generated through a content management system of some sorts, like Wordpress, or something like that. I pointed out that this overlooks the implications of the long tail. Here’s an example.
Tomorrow is the launch of a new product called Multi Profit Websites, it’s a tool for internet marketers to quickly make their own money generating websites for the niches they are interested in. Here’s a link to their website: http://www.multiprofitwebsites.com/
This redirects to video3, so there’s two others here that are well worth watching:
* http://www.multiprofitwebsites.com/video2/
* http://www.multiprofitwebsites.com/video1/
You may be wondering who would buy this product, because clearly from our view, the quality of the markup this system generates is slap bang in the previous century.
Have a read of potential buyers, fellow internet marketers: http://www.multiprofitwebsites.com/blog/?p=3&cpage=1#comments — it’s an eyeopening read. And these people will be refreshing like crazy tomorrow trying to be the first ones to buy the product at it’s introductory price (my guess about $197). After the introductory period has ended I’d expect the price to go up to $497.
That’s $200 for a product that does a fraction of what Wordpress can do. But, it’s simpler to install and run (Not using databases is regarded as a feature). Lifetime support – something you can’t get from Wordpress.
So after tomorrow, a couple of hundred thousand new sites will appear as the Internet Marketing crowd buy, download and install this product, and create multiple websites targetting each of their niches.
Custom templates can be purchased, commissioned by the same two guys, for the cheap price of $47 per theme. That’s $47 for a template that neither validates, nor be accessible, nor follow anything like web standards. These won’t be anywhere near the free Blogger templates done by the webstandards crowd.
You think the two people behind this product won’t sell many of these? One of the people behind this product – John Thornhill – claims that he took home $250,000 in 2007 selling ebooks on ebay. And, incredulous as it sounds, I believe him.
He taught himself internet marketing and started to make money working at home. Quit his day job in a factory, and now works whenever he feels like it.
So he’s spent $100,000 over 3 years to build this product. Validation, web standards and accessibility not taken into consideration. It launches tomorrow. It does less than Wordpress. People have to pay for it. And we’ll see countless of thousands of websites created from this product.
Welcome to the real web of tomorrow. Still as broken as before. Despite the freely available Wordpress and it’s perceived support of web standards, internet marketers will buy a worse product because it fills the need they (believe they) have.