Validating HTML and CSS

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Church Web Sites Hardware & Software Computer Security NIC TechBlog North Indiana Conference PO Box 869 Marion, IN 46953 1.800.783.5138 info@nicumc.org	Validating HTML & CSS Can Everyone REALLY See Your Web Site? I recently had an experience that forced me to realize the importance of making sure that all of the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) programming passes as valid. I had made some changes to the nicumc.org web site, and afterward had a message in my email inbox wondering what had happened to the site. The message relayed that “it loads terribly. Graphics on top of graphics, part of the logo hidden, many link graphics all over the place and the menu at the top is jumbled.” So, I wanted to try and figure out what the problem was. I do test changes that I make to the web site in all the current modern browsers available to me (Internet Explorer 5/6/7, Netscape 7/8, Firefox, Opera, Mozilla). I hadn’t seen this problem with any of those browsers. But I do NOT have access to a Macintosh (either at home or work), and it was the Mac Safari web browser that was causing the problem. I thought this was just “a Mac thing,” but after a little research, I found out that Safari is more unforgiving than other browsers when it comes to poorly-formed HTML and/or CSS. So, really, this was MY problem; not the browser’s problem. I had my work cut out for me. So, I set forth making sure that all of my CSS and HTML passed as valid. The World Wide Web Consortium has an online service where you can validate yout HTML and CSS markup to make sure it is valid. The HTML Validator checks HTML markup, and the CSS Validator check all the CSS that applies to a web page, whether linked or embedded on the page itself. It turns out that I had some errors in my CSS, and also a few in my HTML markup. Since then, I’ve checked all of the pages on the nicumc.org site and validated their HTML and CSS markup. I now show this by displaying the Valid HTML 4.01 and Valid CSS logos at the bottom of each page. If your church has a web site, I would also encourage you to check the validity of your HTML and/or CSS markup with the W3C’s tools: HTML Validator: validator.w3.org CSS Validator: jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator This will help to ensure that everyone sees your church’s web page as you intended it to be seen. If it doesn’t, then it will list the errors it finds. If you marked up the HTML and/or CSS yourself, then fix it! If not, then talk to your web design person or company and let them know about it.