How important is HTML & CSS Markup Validation Service?

[mlegg]

After I got your help with a few problems on a charity site I made, I decided to check the HTML and CSS code at http://validator.w3.org/

My site passed so I copied the small images and placed them under my footer on the bottom of the page. Do people pay attention to that much?
thanks
Mike

[djr33]

It's always a good idea to use valid code (any sort of standard code, even, but especially validated), because this will make it appear more accurately in more browsers and also work on devices that don't fully support your site, such as basic browsers in (older) mobile phones.

As for placing the valid notice on your page, I think it entirely depends on the type of website. If you are a web designer then having that on your pages is good so that other designers (and potential clients) can see that you use valid code. But if this is just a website for Charity (or any other non-web design type site) and most people visiting the site are not web designers, then most people won't care.

So my suggestion is to include that on your personal site if you're offering your services to others and perhaps on other sites you design to show that you have good code if you think you might use them as demos for clients. But beyond that, it won't matter. Also, if you ever decided to share your work as a template or other distributed type of code, then including those logos might make your customers/users feel good about it.


But for your average user it will make no difference. Having the valid code is crucial though, because they will care a lot (maybe even more than web designers who might be understanding) if your code doesn't work for any reason-- so they may ignore the little image at the bottom, but they certainly won't ignore buggy code.

[mlegg]

Thanks for the reply. I validated it and put the images because the national chapter of the Ahepa charity was also looking to have my design for their national site. I am retired now on disability, so I can't make money off of this. It's OK though.

[Abdullahabin]

Ive found that validating periodically during designing a site from scratch helps eliminate the small errors that can lead to frustration.

[jscheuer1]

There are no guarantees. Using standards compliant valid code often makes troubleshooting easier, and less likely to even be needed. But you can still make quite a mess of things with standards compliant valid code. There are also 'best practices', but these vary by opinion in at least some cases. And I'm not aware of any official 'best practices' site.