What is W3C Validation?

[Remember..]

This is great I found over 300 errors..

[Always]

Very informative to new web developers, thanks!

[AceInfinity]

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) are the group of people responsible with creating web standards. This includes HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, RSS and upcoming HTML5.

Standards for web design and layout are actually very important as it creates a centralization of technologies that browsers can employ to ensure proper visual experience for users. Imagine if you will that the simple break tag <br> was different for Internet Explorer and Firefox? It would create chaos for admins and web surfers. Instead they use standards agreed upon by W3C.

What this means for you is that if you want the best possible experience for your users you'll start by using validated code. W3C offers validation for markup and for CSS.

Markup Validation: http://validator.w3.org/

CSS Validation: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

While I don't feel that CSS validation is nearly as important it's in my view very important to validate your markup. This forum is dedicated to helping admins learn to validate their code which will give their users the best possible experience.

Those with validated sites can place an image like this on them.

the more future safe break tag is actually <br />. So I would recommend that everyone use that instead of <br> since most tags like in XHTML require an end tag, defined with a forward slash. The <br /> code could be viewed as both combined together since you don't need a set of tags for the break tag like most others.

(We don't use <br></br>, it's been <br> or <br />)

On a sidenote... Only 21 errors for the W3C validation in total. Pretty good for a days work on a website

[zerdnem]

I validated my website and fixed all errors except those from cwahi.net.

[Danny]

I really should start doing this, stupid lazy me.

[-Dreams]

I honestly don't care about W3C validation but whatever.

[Kyle FYI™]

I was thinking this haha.

[EnergySource]

Thank you very much for informing us, even I find this information usefull.