Yesterday I wrote about the benefits a website visitor experience when a site has been done with valid HTML. Now it’s time for the benefits for the person or persons building the website.

Personal Benefits of Validating HTML

It’s the case of hear me now, believe me later. As I mentioned in the first post of this series, many are very defensive about not validating. The only reason I can guess why is because it just means more work, and they have never tried.

I have two things to say about that. First, it’s easier than you think, and second, once you get in the habit, you won’t see it as extra work. Below are the reasons why.

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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.

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Occasionally, I offer free advice on forums where webmasters ask for feedback on there website. When doing so, myself or another experienced webmaster will suggest that the owner asking for the review should validate their code.

The common responses:

• Validating HTML, who cares…
• I can get my site to look and work the way I want without validating. It’s a waste of time.
• It won’t help my SEO
• It takes too long
• Nobody needs to tell me how to build a site
• And the list goes on…

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My writing stinks you say. Eh…you may be right. I check my spelling, and try to make sure everything is correct. Still though, I know I need help.

Good news for me? It looks like I just found some help, and have even put this post to the test. It’s the Document Readability Test. The test reveals the number of characters, sentences, and reading comprehension level. The results also show ways to improve readability of text, and lists the most offending sentences.

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This is the second annual Top Ten Website Mistake report from BWI. The information is based on my basic usability and design analysis that I do for my clients. For 2008 see: Top Ten Website Mistakes.

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Without hovering your mouse over my logo found in the header of this site, do you think it links to my home page? I’m certain that most of you think it will.

Predictable web design is knowing your users, and knowing how they expect your website to work. Here are a few important methods to make any site more predictable for its users.

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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a new little tool for webmasters. It’s the W3C Cheatsheet. Though the page is lacking in luster when it comes to description (I had to guess what to do when first using it), it packs a fully loaded archive of all your HTML and CSS element attributes.

To use the tool you simply type in the HTML element you want to know more about, and W3C delivers all of the elements attributes. Knowing how to address those attributes is up to you, but I’m guessing will come in very handy for many of us.

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Recently asked on how much it costs to build a 75 page website on what I will call Subject A, I thought this might be a good time to explain a way to calculate this. Possibly even, on how not to calculate this.

I get this question repeatedly, “How much does it cost to build a basic website?” My answer? It’s $10 plus my hourly rate if you want anything extra on the site. Example of $10 website without extras. Anyone want one?

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Two months ago I added the Tweetmeme button to my blog. Two weeks after that, I wrote about how it appeared to be doubling my Twitter Traffic. In that post I started out by saying that I may be jumping the gun on this subject. Apparently, I did.

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I saw this headline found on Yahoo today, and I can’t help but saying…Duh. Most kids don’t like to read. The article, “Is Blogging a Slog? Some Young People Think So” was about how researchers found out that young people don’t like to read long blogs or articles anymore. Like they ever did. Comically written in a nearly 1,000 word article, I guess the young people today will not be reading it.

To ensure that this post is short enough for everyone to read, I leave you this picture to do the talking.

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