Validator not working in CS5

[hmhamed]

Hi everyone,

I just installed CS5 (was previously using CS4) and I'm having trouble getting the Validator (in the results tools) to allow me to scan a html page for code errors.  Is there something I need to turn on or change to make it work?  The "validate current document" option is greyed out and I love using that tool.  Someone please help!!!  Thanks

[Nancy OShea]

The validation tool in DW was never top notch. You get more accurate results with the W3C tools.

Code Validation Tools
---------------------------
CSS - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
HTML - http://validator.w3.org/

Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox
------------------------------------------
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics | Print | Media  Specialists
http://alt-web.com/
http://twitter.com/altweb
http://alt-web.blogspot.com

[Guest]

The same problem here: I installed the trial version of Dreamweaver CS5 while having Dreamweaver CS4 still installed. At first, the validation panel in DW CS5 did work but after a short time stopped working and even deleting the personal configuration folder did not help.Seems to be a bug.

Greets Michael

[Ignacio B.]

Hi,

the validation is only for XML and not longer for HTML.

Regards,

Ignacio

[Otimizacão_de_Sites]

I'll try this one, but before want to kow if this valides on google.

Thanks

Reinaldo Silva

http://www.otimizacaodesites.org

Brazil

[jeffoz1]

Why have a button that does not work? This is confusing. So how do you validate Xhtml ? I am aware of the 'clean up' command but if you are missing a tag it can put in a bunch of other tags on clean up. Also the clean up doesn't tell you what it has done.

Thanks

[Guest]

It doesn't seem plausible that a validation tool in a web authoring app only works for XML. If that's true, then it ought to, at least, work on XHTML, but it doesn't. And, while it's true the Dreamweaver validator wasn't great, it was a convenient first step that usually caught my most egregious markup errors. I miss it.

[Zabeth69]

It is true; the validator in CS5 has been limited and no longer validates html. I liked some of the old functionality, too, but W3C was always better.

Always use the W3C validator tool: http://validator.w3.org/ You can validate html, CSS, either online or by pasting in code. It works great, quickly, and easily.

Beth

[-_Simon_-]

This is a real irritation when working offline....

...and when you click on the validator options in preferences, it still provides a list of doctypes including various htmls to validate against by default if there's no declaration in the document you're checking.....

Smells more like a bug than a deliberate absence......

[Zabeth69]

I hear you. I think it could have been better implemented; if it doesn't validate HTML, etc., it should not have them in the list.

And for offline validating, I'm not sure there are tools for that. A quick Google search turned this up: http://arealvalidator.com/

I have not used it, and you're right, it's a shame you have to go and download a validator. But if you're seriously validating for the web, I would still stick with the W3C online validation. If the old DW validator was so not good, why should I trust the validation offered by A Real Validator (see my link), which is dated 2007...three years ago, which is even before DW CS4 was released!

My opinion.

Beth

[-_Simon_-]

It seems you're right Beth, checking the docs, local validation is a deliberate omission....

The validator preferrences are there for compatibility with validator extensions like CSE Pro - it looks very good but costs another $120-odd.

Big fail on this Adobe - given the ever-constant criticism DW gets for churning out grotty code by the mile, it should be validating output by default.

[Zabeth69]

I differ with the grotty code comment...it's only as grotty as you allow it to be...

Thanks, Nancy, for the word on the good offline validator...

Beth

[John Waller]

      given the ever-constant criticism DW gets for churning out grotty code by the mile

Careful with the mudslinging. That's not DW's reputation at all - quite the opposite in fact. Since day 1, DW has been engineered to create clean, high quality code albeit occasionally a little more bloated than necessary to cover all angles. Can you provide reproducible grotty code examples which are not user created?

[-_Simon_-]

Sorry, but a LOT of people criticise DW, IME for most standards-orientated folk its probably the default setting.

Sure it's output is the user's fault ultimately, but its hard to argue that validating output would help to mitigate user error. A lot clients I work with have folk using DW who never stray from design view and see it essentially as word processing for the Web  - I'm pretty sure they are at least part of Adobe's target market.

....removing local validation instead of improving it sends quite a strong message IMO.

[John Waller]

Fair enough Simon. DW is not perfect and I have my issues with DW too, esp Adobe's poor approach to patch management.

However, clean code to me is one of DW's strengths.

Adobe never removes features lightly and I'm certain that extensive research was done to establish that few people were using DW's in-built validator - or at least not enough to warrant improving it.

I have never used it. I'm sure others use it regularly. But given the W3C validator is the standard by which most people benchmark their code, I think Adobe is wiser to drop a weak validation feature in DW than spend engineering hours getting it at least equal to the existing W3C validator.

[Ben M]

-_Simon_- wrote:

Sorry, but a LOT of people criticise DW, IME for most standards-orientated folk its probably the default setting.

Sure it's output is the user's fault ultimately, but its hard to argue that validating output would help to mitigate user error. A lot clients I work with have folk using DW who never stray from design view and see it essentially as word processing for the Web  - I'm pretty sure they are at least part of Adobe's target market.

....removing local validation instead of improving it sends quite a strong message IMO.

Simon, I have to agree with you that a lot of users use the Design View a lot and moving to Live View is a slow change.  That's one of my largest complaints with the Widget Browser, Spry Menu Bar and Tabbed Panels v.2.0 running on Spry 1.7 framework.  They are using Javascript to make the new versions of those Widgets work and thus design view almost becomes obsolete.  It does not make things easier for the new users when the old Spry widgets and competitors widgets render in Design View.

With regard to the validation, I have to admit that the only time I ever used it was for the Outlook 2007 validator but after awhile I just came to the realization to only use tables without backgrounds for emails.  Eventually that feature had to be updated or removed.  They *could* have linked to the W3C validator in some way, shape or form, which would have been the best way to go, but as someone pointed out in this post, if you were working offline that would not be an option.  But in all honestly how often are we really working offline?  If the power goes out and I work on my laptop for a few minutes it might serve a purpose, but even traveling I think the consensus would be that most users are connected to the internet.

[-_Simon_-]

>But in all honestly how often are we really working offline?

So far once in 5 days which is when I noticed. I just fired up PhpED and used that instead, my point wasn't that there aren't plenty of alternatives, rather that checking the validity of html/css is a pretty basic requirement in an html/css editor. Didn't realise that would be such a contentious proposition!

[Guest]

     validator extensions like CSE Pro - it looks very good but costs another $120-odd.

http://www.htmlvalidator.com/professional/http://www.htmlvalidator.com/

I am very impressed with CSE HTML Validator -- FYI CSE HTML Validator Standard costs $70 wheras the Pro version costs 130

[Guest]

I use CSE Pro all the time -- have for years. And I highly recommend it. I

suspect that Standard is all most of us need. BUT... as I'm coding along, I

use the validator in DreamWeaver. When it's time to get everything cleaned

up at the end I start using CSE Pro. Or, if the page is dorky and the

DreamWeaver validator isn't telling me what is wrong, I switch to CSE Pro.

Sometimes it gives me more information and shows me what is wrong; sometimes

it doesn’t.

There's still no excuse for a $400 HTML coder not to have a built in

validator. That's the bottom line. And I'm hearing people say they might

not procure it. CS4 still has a validator in it and maybe that's where they

will stay.

Shame on you, Adobe!

[lkupersmith]

I've been using the CSE HTML Validator for many years and think it is the best - it catches many more errors than the W3C checker does and is totally configurable. However, there hasn't been a working extension to run this through Dreamweaver since Dreamweaver 4.

Is there anyone else using this that has the ability to write an extension for Dreamweaver? Ideally the currently open page could be validated with the results returned to Dreamweaver validation window so we could click to jump directly to lines with errors.

[Nancy OShea]

This is a real irritation when working offline....

Get The HTML Validator (Tidy) add-on for Firefox -

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/249/?advancedsearch=1

Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics | Print | Media  Specialists
http://alt-web.com/
http://twitter.com/altweb
http://alt-web.blogspot.com

[jeffoz1]

I can appreciate the comments concerning using W3C for accuracy, but the validator was very convenient and fast for finding basic structural problems. What I don't understand is if this functionality has been omitted then why include "clean up HTML" under the command menu. I used this couple of times and it does not tell you what it has done after clean up. When I painlessly searched to see what it had done, I found that it had changed the code to make it error free but it did not work the way it should. There were some additional tags put in but this was not the proper fix. DW should omit this function too or include both in my opinion.

[timarian]

I too am very disappointed that Adobe removed the validator tool. It worked great to find extra <div> tags or others that weren't nested properly. Now, we have a button, but it's just greyed out.

There is no reason for this feature to be removed. I'll repeat that is EXTREMELY inconvenient and time-consuming to use 3rd party or online sites like W3 (regardless of if it's more thorough). Creative Suite goes 2 steps forward, 1 step back... Step it up Adobe. Macromedia wouldn't have let DW development go stagnant. <sigh>...</sigh>

[hmhamed]

Seems like a lot of people aren't too happy about this.  It just doesn't make sense that they'd keep the option up there, but unavailable.  If their intention was to get rid of the feature they shouldn't of left it up there.  However, I do hope that's not the case, as I think it's quite convenient and I hope that in a nearby update to the program they fix this issue and get it to work.

I know there are other options out there, perhaps better options.  Nevetheless, having the option to use it within the same program the design work is being done in is super convenient, and if anything it should be enhanced further, not removed.

[Zabeth69]

No matter how many people agree with you here in the Forum, this is a user to user Forum, and it is not frequented so much by Adobe. I'm not an Adobe employee, either.

If you feel strongly about a feature that you would like to see (put back) in Dreamweaver, submit a bug report/feature request. https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Beth