I'd love to have a browser that validated pages while you browse. Lots of our sites are password protected (and therefore rely on cookies for access), which means that its tough to use web-based validators. Granted, I could do a "Save As" from the browser, then upload the file to the validator. But...this ain't too convenient.
iCab, a mac-only browser, has this very same feature. If the page validates, it displays a green smiley face. If not, the face frowns and goes red. Cool. Except for one little thing...it doesn't understand XHTML. And we're doing our latest project in XHTML. Argh.
So, I started poking around for a Mozilla-based solution. Checky looked promising. Checky is a contextual-menu item. A right-click brings up a list of a number of validators, and choosing one opens up the validator in a new tab. I'm not so keen on navigating the contextual menu (preferring iCab's smiley face), but I can live with it. Unfortunately, none of the HTML/XHTML validators could handle my password-protected sites (instead, they just validated the "you're not logged in" page that non-authenticated users are redirected to).
Another option is the Web Development Mozilla extension. By picking the "Validate Local HTML" option, I actually can validate the password protected pages. It still requires a few extra clicks, and opening a new tab, but it works. Cool.
Posted by Karl
December 17, 2003 05:01 PM