There is one scenario I see play out again and again on Web Design-L, css-discuss, and countless other forums. Newbie Designer posts a link to a test page, asking for help because it doesn’t behave as expected in this or that browser. Guru Designer replies, telling Newbie Designer that their page doesn’t validate, and that they should go validate their page before asking such questions. There is no further discussion; no further replies are posted; no one else is willing to help.
Why does this happen? Why won’t we help you?
The short, smart-alec, Zen-like answer is that we are helping you, you just don’t realize it yet. The full answer goes like this:
1.Validation may reveal your problem. Many cases of "it works in one browser but not another" are caused by silly author errors. Typos like missing attribute values can cause browsers to crash; validation catches these typos. Simple errors like missing end tags (such as or
) or missing elements (such as Thursday, July 16, 2009
Why we won’t help you
I am not claiming that your page, once validated, will automatically render flawlessly in every browser; it may not. I am also not claiming that there aren’t talented designers who can create old-style "Tag Soup" pages that do work flawlessly in every browser; there certainly are. But the validator is an automated tool that can highlight small but important errors that are difficult to track down by hand. If you create valid markup most of the time, you can take advantage of this automation to catch your occasional mistakes. But if your markup is nowhere near valid, you’ll be flying blind when something goes wrong. The validator will spit out dozens or even hundreds of errors on your page, and finding the one that is actually causing your problem will be like finding a needle in a haystack.
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