XHTML Validators Review, Part 2

Validome Online Validator

The Validome online validator is available at http://www.validome.org/

Licensing

The Validome validator is free to use for personal and professional use. An XML service is available for external applications to use the validator but use for commercial software is restricted.

Documentation

A simple help page is available at http://www.validome.org/lang/en/html/help . A resources page is available with listings of valid tags for several different specifications.

Features

The Validome validator provides auto-detect for doctype and character sets. It allows document checking via URL and file upload, however does not provide direct input like the W3C validator. It allows markup cleanup via HTML Tidy and you can view original markup code in the validation results page. Like the W3C validator, it does not provide batch validation.

Test

The first file I tested did not have a DOCTYPE, and the validator refused to validate with a default DOCTYPE. Once I manually set the DOCTYPE in the validator options the validator worked fine with decent cleanup. However, for some reason it considered the xmlns and xml:lang attributes invalid so every file came back as invalid. I thought I was going crazy but then I checked out the W3 website and it's examples for strict XHTML files included the xmlns and xml:lang attributes. Quite strange for an XHTML validator to have such a common attribute flagged as invalid. The validator's cleanup markup option didn't work – it refused to correct any of the files I checked.

Knee Jerk Conclusion – Junk. It has an inferior feature set compared to the W3C validator, it's cleanup option didn't work, and the auto-detect for the doctype functioned poorly.

WDG online validator

The WDG online validator is available at http://htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ .

Licensing

This validator is available only for personal/non-commercial use, according to the creative commons license.

Documentation

The WDG group provides information about common validation problems, tips, a comparison to the W3C online validator, and a list of character encodings supported.

Features

When looking at the options I assumed the WDG validator was actually an generic HTML validator because it lacked an option to specify DOCTYPE. I realized later that an auto-detect is built into the validator (more on this in the testing section). However, it does provide document checking by URL, upload, and direct input. It also provides checking for entire websites and a batch mode (for online web pages). You can also show the original markup in the results page.

Testing

This validator works well enough to detect all tag errors (such as nesting mistakes, unclosed tags, etc). However, it didn't provide warnings for things such as no specified xml language, missing charset, and no namespace. It also displayed multiple errors for simple errors such as unclosed tags. The validator was confused for the xmlns and xml:lang attributes for the file without a specificed DOCTYPE (which it assumed was transitional).

Knee-Jerk Conclusion – Decent alternative to the W3C validator for single static pages. However, the batch checking for online web pages and websites is awesome (assuming it works, I didn't test this) for currently deployed sites.

SimpleTidy

SimpleTidy is a free application for download at http://www.tsnetsoft.com/software.htm

Licensing

Available for personal/non-commercial use. The license is available at http://www.tsnetsoft.com/license.htm .There are also commercial versions available at a cost.

Documentation

No online documentation is available, only contact information for support. Strangely enough, there is no built in help in the application either.

Features

SimpleTidy is, well, simple. It gives options to cleanup single files or run a batch cleanup on a folder (with an option for subfolders). You can view errors for single files after cleanup in the User Interface.

Testing

Since this application is focused on cleanup rather than validation it only displays errors when cleanup has problems. It does not state the validation errors in the original documents. Also, there is no way for specifying the DOCTYPE to use for the cleanup. I would imagine these features are avaiable in the paid versions of the application. Otherwise, the cleanup worked correctly for the transitional DOCTYPE.

Knee-Jerk Conclusion – Don't use if you want to use the strict DOCTYPE. It might be worth a look at the paid versions of the application.

Conclusion

The W3C online validator was far and away the best online validator for single, static web pages. Avoid the Validome validator and use the WDG validator for deployed sites. If you choose to use one of the offline validators, use SimpleTidy if you want basic cleanup functionality. Otherwise, use HTMLTidy for more advanced options (some configuration required).