Don't Back Down

Naturally, your web page should validate. I chose XHTML 1.1 for my page, though you can also validate to XHTML 1.0 (either strict or transitional). Heck, I'm sure you can validate to most any version of HTML, so long as your DOCTYPE is correct. But I like the challenge of validating to the bleeding edge, so XHTML 1.1 it is.

The next logical step was to validate my CSS. In comparison, this wasn't much work at all. I did run into some problems with buttons, as the one example I wanted to use made use of a (currently) invalid property. But hey, what fun would it be if it all just dropped into place?

Even though your page might validate, you should probably check for multi-browser support. I typically check with Internet Explorer and Mozilla. There are other browsers, and depending on how much you concern yourself with cross-platform support, you may want to test as many as possible.

Now that you're done with the page itself, don't forget the feeds!

Userland has a validator that appears to handle RSS versions 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0, though I've heard reports that it hasn't been updated in a while. Archive.org also has a multi-format validator (it even has support for the Atom 0.2 snapshot!). Meanwhile, the W3C has a validator for RDF. Make sure you check out the triples and the graphs. Cool stuff! Leigh Dodds has a validator for RSS 1.0 (use the beta version if you want extra module support).

I generally try and check each of these validators, even though I don't necessarily live by all of the results. As most people seem to reference the archive.org validator, I generally use it as a guideline to make sure that the feeds are at least readable. If it passes other validators, too, then it's a bonus. You can also view your feeds in multiple aggregators to make sure things look okay in each.

But that's still not all! Twice this week - on Tuesday and again on Thursday - I mentioned funkiness.

If you're concerned with not being funky, you should check out Da Funkidator, which seems to do a pretty good job of rooting out funkiness. And yes, my feeds still show up as being non-funky.

What's the secret? I thought I had said that you could not contain the phrases RDF or RSS 1.0 and still be considered non-funky? True enough. The secret is HTML character entities. Generally we use these for special punctuation or different character sets. Surprise - you can use them for regular old letters, too! And that's what I've done here. Apparently Da Funkidator doesn't yet look for the entity representation of either of those phrases, so I can still validate. Of course, it's a pain to enter them that way - but hey, it works!

To render RDF, use RDF. To use RDF in a URL, replace the characters with %52%44%46. If case is important (ie, you need lower case), then you should use %72%64%66 instead of rdf. The % indicates an HTML escape code.

To display RSS 1.0, use RSS 1.0.

And don't forget your semicolons when using those HTML entities!