Web Best Practices Using the Libraries' Templates Know Your User Writing for the Web Writing HTML Validating Your HTML Page Design Images Naming Directories, Files and Links Accessibility Linking and Navigation Ongoing Maintenance
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Validating Your HTML
In order to ensure that your web page displays properly in various browsers and contains valid code, validate your HTML markup:
- Make sure you have the correct DOCTYPE declaration on your page. Check to be sure that your HTML document begins with the following:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
(All the Libraries' templates begin with this declaration. In order to see it, you must view the source of the document; the information does not display in a browser.) - Run your file through the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Markup Validation Service. Follow the instructions to use the validator tool.
- Identify and correct any errors in your HTML markup. Common errors include forgetting to close your tags, and unencoded quotation marks (") and ampersands (&). (Learn how to fix this problem--see Coding Special Symbols in "Writing HTML"). After correcting your errors, rerun the validator until your page is error free.
If you are unable to correct your page and get it to validate, please e-mail webservices@itd.umd.edu for assistance.
