Thoughts On Validation
Validation is an extremely valuable and useful tool for front-end development. The process of validation provides markup (and CSS) error detection/correction as well as assurance the document(s) conform to the formal standar. I look at it as a goal to strive for during the development process. Validation is also a component of best-practices and with that said, your work doesn’t always have to validate. Blasphemy, I know! Validation is the standard in a controlled environment, emphasis on the controlled environment.
Dealing with clients, a team of developers, third-party vendors, etc, the list of details that slip further from your hands grows at an alarmingly rate. So what I’m saying is, don’t have a conniption fit if your work doesn’t validate. It should, but if you can’t do anything about it, let it go. Make a comment in the documentation about the failed validation: what failed, why the failure is in place, etc.
The ultimate reason to document the failure comes down to saving time. Saving time bug tracking, saving time in q&a, etc, because if and when something goes wrong around certain documentations, you have a great lead as to where your problem is.
Lastly, I read some chatter the other day in a sitepoint forum mocking people with valid badges on their sites. I agree they are lame and played out, but they serve a great purpose. When I first started, validation wasn’t a part of my standards and my work suffered. It was also extremely beneficial for me to see said badges on aweseomly useful sites (zeldman, meyerweb, etc) where I made the connection: hey, these guys know what’s up and they do it.
The flip to the positives about lame badges is having ridiculous messages sent to you regarding the markup on your site. While it should validate, regardless of a badges presence, it really should validate with one. However, no one needs to hear about how they’re fronting about validation from visitors they don’t know. If the validation “poser” what have you, is really posing, it’ll be obvious from some quick glances around their site, and then they’re really not even worth talking to. If they’re not, then I’m going to say either a)they know it won’t validate and they aren’t happy with it either or b)they made a simple mistake and have yet to realize it. End of story.