An easy way to start evaluating web design companies

Hello all

I just wanted to share a quick tip for any newbies or laypersons after a new website. Specifically, this is about checking how closely the company you want to build your website adheres to W3C Recommendations (i.e. all the behind-the-scenes technical stuff that helps make your website universally acceptable.)

Simply visit the W3C Markup Validation Service home page, type in the address of the company and click "Check".

If you get a message that reads along the lines of "This document was successfully checked" it means that the company has the ability to build web pages that validate to W3C Recommendations and other standards.

Of course, even the most experienced web designers can sometimes forget to close a <p> tag. In fact, I'm pretty sure this happens to every single designer from time to time (myself included!) And checking the validation is by no means the only way to judge a web company. Design skills, a sound understanding of your area of industry, price, even standards of customer service all need to be taken into account. But if you're getting a result that returns hundreds of errors, you may want to think twice...

It's a small step, but one in the right direction that can give you slightly better peace of mind.

Anyone got any other tips to share on this subject?

Helen

and does your website validate? I know mine does.

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It does indeed validate... (phew!)

We're currently working on increasing its mobile compatibility using the W3C MobileOK Checker Steve recommended.

I think you will find this W3C validation tool says differently. I just asked because I presumed you had run yours through it before posting the thread.

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hmmm, knew we werent compliant, but looks like I've got some work to do

On a serious note, how much weight is given by being W3C compliant?

I remember looking into this a couple of years ago, and none of the search engines seemed particularly bothered.

Whats the current stand, are SE penalising non validated sites, or is it more of a marketing tool for web dev's?

I wonder if Bob the builder who's in the market for a website be worried by this or would he be more impressed with the visual look of a web designers site and their portfolio?

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Lol, cheers for the heads-up Indizine. We had of course run all our pages through the validator I originally posted about (got to practise what you preach and all that!) but not through the one you've used.

Anyhoo, we've just gone through our code - funnily enough it wasn't our CSS causing the error (a simple typo of a repeated "px") but a plug in!

Just goes to show, as I said in my post it's always possible for something small to pass you by - at least we have a great selection of tools out there (and great support on the forums) to help us keep on the path towards perfect validation... Thanks again for the heads-up

I think that being W3C compliant is one of those things that can't be looked at on it's own... There are so many other aspects of web design (like a great portfolio and design skills) that are equally if not more important.

I'm not sure if SE penalise sites that aren't validated, but being W3C compliant helps for things like: making sure you haven't got any obvious bugs that may mess up the layout accross different platforms; making a site easy to update if several different people will be working on it, etc.

Some people might claim it makes a site look more "professional", but again this could be abused, as you say Steve, as a marketing tool for web dev's. And what happens if one day you make a change and you get an error, so your site is no longer valid? Especially if you have recently touted the W3C tool as a contributing standard of a good site... Ahem. I can't think of who that happened to recently?!

I'm pretty new to the forum (indeed to the entire world of forums) and still not familiar with all the etiquette ins-and-outs. I can now think of a much better way to have phrased my initial post (my first ever thread starter) and were I to do it again, I'd much rather put the emphasis on how web devs can use the tool to help them check their site as e.g. a debugger/ maintenance standard. Well we live and learn I suppose, but at least we've now got a bit of debate going on... At the end of the day, if I can learn some more about W3C standards and their use/ relevance to different groups of people, I'll be more than happy!

That's the thing, you can have it validate when you hadn it over but if anyone makes any changes to it that could knock something off and suddenly an error can exist, caused by the slightest thing. It is not the be all and end all. We have been making sure all our sites validate on handover, after that, we can't be responsible of coursre, but I take screenshots on the day, and keep them on file plus send to client to view, just so they can see for themselves. It's that little bit of extra mile added into the pot.

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Ours fails, a lot! But as soon as you add widgets and plugins this generally happens, new sites are always ready to pass, then when you start adding what you need they fail.

But then one of our latest clients (a MLF member) sends a review of business up ten fold (not clicks, business), building nothing but Wordpress now, and although with a few widgets they fail the W3C, they kick ass out of html for natural SEO, and perfect for website owners to use and add what they like!

Summary, it would be nice to sort out the errors (which is just silly things like open tags etc) in an ideal world, but rather focus on getting clients up where they should be! WINNING the WWW race!

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@Kip-FX: Completely agree with you there; widgets can be a pain for validation, but the saving grace for many other things like generating a list of recent posts, feedback forms, follow-me's and that sort of thing!

One major issue we come across on a regular basis is with CSS3 implementation: yeah, I know its not fully released yet, but the vast majority of browsers (and by that I mean anything-that-doesn't-start-'IE') have support for CSS3; rounded-corners, box shadows and the like.

The problem we find is that when you're trying to get some semblance of cross-browser compatibility, you have to use some browser specific -- and therefore invalid -- CSS. Classic example is the box shadow, for which the valid css is:

But if you want it to show in Firefox, Safari, Chrome you need to have:

What is one to do?

The answer is, of course simple: we take the invalid CSS in favour of interoperability, but we do so because it is progressive and will one day become standard. This is much different to the time, blood sweat and tears that developers have spent implementing fixes for IE6 -- that work was regressive; like putting lead back into petrol so older cars can use it.

When that day comes, that CSS3 is released (and the web is united in utopic celebration), we can simply go back through and remove the browser-specific code et voila!

Future-proof, standards-compliant code: In fact, if you go to the W3C's CSS Validator and click 'options', they already have a CSS3 Checker!

But I must stress that whilst standards-compliant websites aren't the be-all and end-all of website design, it is in the interest of the website designer to create standards compliant websites, to ensure that websites display as intended by whoever's viewing them.