I have remained loyal to the W3C in regards to validating every site I do, whether it's a basic personal site or a small business website but am I wasting my time?

 

With today's browsers is it still necessary to worry about validation? Do clients even know, or care, what validation is?

 

I ask because with the introduction of HTML5 it seems a lot of seemingly unimportant errors are cropping up in one or two of my sites. None of these errors are a danger to the layout/design of the site, just silly things like at present HTML5 doesn't except the canonical link tag. Stuff like that.

 

So, should I really worry about it? If I am using the latest CSS/HTML then do I honestly need to worry about my sites breaking in other browsers?

If you know HTML really good, then you should know what are actual errors, and what is reading it wrong. It's good to quickly see, but should be taken with a grain of salt, not to live and die by.

If you know HTML really good, then you should know what are actual errors, and what is reading it wrong. It's good to quickly see, but should be taken with a grain of salt, not to live and die by.

 

Yeah, like I say, no errors as such, just that HTML5 doesn't recognise or except certain meta tags/rel tags.

What errors are you getting? HTML5 has bought in new validation rules, especially for the new tags.

What errors are you getting? HTML5 has bought in new validation rules, especially for the new tags.

 

Off the top of my head, the <link rel="canonical"> isn't currently supported.

yeah like I said... its more of a guildeline more than a rule. Most of the time I dont even test because Im careful about my code.

It's a guideline. Human judgement should still overrule it. The validator tool is automated and just for a general "once over". Sometimes you have to do things that won't pass the validator but it doesn't mean it's wrong

There is an argument to say that the more valid it is now, the more valid it'll be in the future - as it'll develop more warnings and errors as time goes on if the change any of the standards (assuming the code is left unchanged). To keep this to a minimum, I always try and get it as tight as possible, within reason like Blofield says.

Validation is to be taken with a pinch of salt and used with a dose of common sense.

It's nice to have the site validate but if, in your case, the errors are not critical to the site and the site will not fall over because of the error then it is fine to ignore the error for now.

 

Many big sites will not validate due to the code used to make them accessible to all, what should these sites do?