Somehow every time I look at the W3C website, I find a new free web tool that really helps me out. This note is an effort to share these essential web development tools, with some tips about how to best apply them.
http://validator.w3.org/ – You can put in a URI, upload a file, or cut&paste your HTML into this validator. It will tell you whether you have any problems in the code. I’ve found many times where the content management system (CMS) and the plug-in’s will cause a problem. Why does this matter? If your code is clean, then it will be more likely to display correctly across browsers and be indexed more easily by search engines, resulting in more happy visitors to your website. I like to select the “show source” checkbox so that any errors can be easily found in the source code, leading to quicker fixes. I’ve also found that sometimes by fixing one problem, a number of other ones go away.
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ – Similar to the HTML/XHTML validator, this tool ensures that your CSS is up to snuff. It will validate standalone CSS or CSS inside an HTML/XHTML document, via URI, file upload, or cut&paste.
http://validator.w3.org/checklink – We all need this to reduce user 404 errors. I run this near the end of development and after each time a change is made. Sure there are other link checkers out there, but this one is free and you don’t need to run it locally (although there is a link to download it). Use the “Check linked documents recursively, recursion depth” option with a level of 1 to start until you know how much time and depth you wish to check.
http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ – A free semi-WYSIWYG editor for standards compliant HTML/XHTML. While the WYSIWYG portion doesn’t always render true to the browser, it does provide valuable standards compliant code editing at the right price. Other tools like Mozilla SeaMonkey don’t provide XHTML compliant code generation, which can be a problem if you are targeting standards compliant web documents. The editor also works on MathML and SVG, and will also help get your feet wet with RDF, XLink, and XPointer if you know what to look for.
http://validator.w3.org/feed/ – Check your RSS feeds, whether you are creating them yourself or using a tool. I haven’t had a bad RSS feed yet, though I’m keeping my fingers crossed. You can give a URI, or cut&paste your feed to verify.
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/LogValidator/ – An all-in-one validation that combines many of the above into one tool. You need to download and install this one to run it. I haven’t tried it yet. You could try http://qa-dev.w3.org/unicorn/ instead – it is hosted online, though it hasn’t been updated since 2006, although it seems to do a reasonable job of reporting useful information. Again, three input methods are supported: URI, File upload, or cut&paste.
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ – For mobile applications, this validates the page and gives a detailed report. I have limited experience with mobile applications (only one a few years back), and I haven’t used this on a project yet.
These are the tools that I know about from the W3C. There are others at http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/. I like tools from a number of other sites too. I’d like to share those other tools too, and learn about your favorite tools for web work. Comment about your favorites or send them to me and I’ll combine them into a future post.
Tags: software, w3c, web development