If you are learning to build websites, or have been already, know that learning how to validate your HTML could be one of the best things you could do. My next post will be about its benefit for website owners and developers, but today it’s about the user.
They Didn’t Even Notice You Validated
Most web users don’t even know if a website has valid HTML or not. Is there a reason for them to? Not really. They just want the site to work. Do you think visitors notice when your site doesn’t work, appears messed up in their browser, or takes forever to load?
Taking the time to use W3C’s method to validate your HTML is an important step to take when building a website because it can have a huge impact on your users.
Benefits for the User by Validating
There are all sorts of benefits for the users. Here are some easy ones that should be more than enough to convince you to start validating your site today.
Improved Accessibility
Whether it be for the visually impaired (about 2.6% of world population) or devices that simply do not load images, valid code requires the ALT attribute with images. The ALT attribute defines what the image is without loading it.
So by validating, you could improve the user experience for at least 2.6% of all visitors to your site. EASY FIX, and an easy way to gain an edge on a competing website.
Faster Website Loading
A website is rendered (commonly described as drawn) by a users browser. Skipping to define items like image size or position will result in longer load times because it takes longer for the browser to figure out where everything goes. Valid HTML equals faster load time!
Appears as Planned
I have found countless sites (even my own) where the owner was completely unaware that the site appeared differently in other browsers. Though this can still occur with valid code, it more often occurs on poorly coded websites. Slop goes in, slop often comes out!
Some common mistakes: nesting errors, open div tags, and unknown entities like “&”. All of those could effect a website appearance…the WRONG way.
Did you know Microsoft Internet Explorer is the only popular browser that tries to fix what it believes to be an error in code? If you are building websites, and only check them with IE, you are most likely not seeing the errors that others do.
The User Might Be the Owner!
If you charge someone to build a website, you should use valid HTML. Professionalism is expected, even if the site owner has never heard of W3C.
This is the second part of a three part post about why it’s important to validate you code. You can find the first of this three part article here: Reasons Why Validating HTML is Important to You.
ariel (1)
Chris (1)
Curtis (1)
Umm, I can’t argue against this at all, which I think is a first!
Guy.
What do you think about validome? Did you check against achecker.ca too?
I use W3C because it is the most widely used and influential validation service. Also, they allow simple cut and paste for testing, which is good for me because I do a lot of intranet work.
Yea this is important and its a wonder why some one wouldn’t
This is important because google algorithm also check the alt tag, broken links, h1 to h6 tag etc… W3C validation also help to increase page rank of your site… It is first step in off site optimization of SEO
I don’t know more about how validating html is important to the user?But after read this nice post I am sure about it.
the user is always important