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Don't use <FONT>tags that spans around several paragraphs <P>, since the start FONT tag should only placed after a single <P>, and the ending </FONT> before the next <P> tag.
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The items in the PageSpinner menu extension HTML Validation Services contains shortcuts to the following popular Web-based HTML validation services.
It is recommended to run your pages through a HTML validator to see if there are something that's not right with the HTML in your creations. This is especially useful when you are starting to learn HTML. For example, some invalid HTML will look and work just fine in e.g. Netscape Navigator, but could cause problems in other browsers. Running a page through a validator is the best way to find out about such potential problems.
Below are short descriptions of the Web-based validation services available in the menu:
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| W3C HTML Validation Service | World Wide Web Concortium's HTML validation service based on a SGML parser that checks HTML documents for compliance with HTML standards. | |
| Bobby | Bobby is a free web-based service that will help you make web pages accessible to people with disabilities. It will also find HTML compatibility problems that prevent pages from displaying correctly on different web browsers. | |
| Doctor HTML v5 | Doctor HTML will analyze your Web pages and produce reports to help you build and maintain an effective Web site. This validator service can also check for spelling errors & broken links, report estimated download time and more. It also features a commercial site check option. | |
| NetMechanic | NetMechanic checks links, spelling errors & broken links and more. | |
| Website Garage | Website Garage can also check links, spelling errors & broken links and more. | |
Please note that the Web is dynamic; the links and services described here were working at the time of this writing, but services may close and URLs may change in the future.
Some tips on how to make your HTML pages pass a HTML validation:
Don't use <FONT>tags that spans around several paragraphs <P>, since the start FONT tag should only placed after a single <P>, and the ending </FONT> before the next <P> tag.
If you use the <P>...</P> container tag, the start and ending FONT tag pair needs to be inside the <P>...</P> tag pair.
If you don't do this the page will usually be displayed correctly in the major browsers, although it isn't valid HTML.
Several validators are also very sensitive about some browser specific extensions to HTML, like the WIDTH-attribute used in table cells, despite the fact that this attribute is listed in the HTML 3.2 specification, so if you use this attribute your pages will look fine in the major browsers, but they will not pass the validation.
It is also a good idea to include information on what version of HTML your page is using. If you want your pages to be rendered according to the HTML 3.2 standard the following line should be the first line in your page:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
In HTML 4.0 you can select between three different doctype declarations to start your document with:
| <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd"> |
This declaration states that the page should comply to the strict version of HTML 4.0. |
| <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> |
The "transitional" version of HTML 4.0 allows several parts of HTML 3.2, which enables you to validate pages that contains formatting code that makes the pages look nice in older browsers (such as version 3 or earlier of Navigator and Explorer). |
| <DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/frameset.dtd"> | Use this in pages that defines frames. |
Most browser will currently not use this information though, but once browsers that support HTML 4.0 and future extensions to the HTML standard this information may become very useful.
If you want that all your new PageSpinner pages to include information on which HTML version that is being used, you can place a PageSpinner file named "default.html" inside the same folder as the PageSpinner application is located in. The contents of this file will then be used as a template for all new pages created by PageSpinner.
An empty sample default page for HTML 3.2 is included in the same folder as this document, which would be "PageSpinner Extensions:HTML Validation Services Files:default.html" if you have installed the extension HTML Validation Services and the HTML Validation Services Files folder in PageSpinner's Extensions folder.