I hired a coder to do a job, ok, he says he is finish, but the site fails validation and shows roughly 99 errors... Coder says that is no big deal, site works, bye... How important do you guys think validation is? http://validator.w3.org/
Let the flame war begin. I'll open with the first shot. It matters very little. Have you opened it in the most common browsers and does the site appear and function properly? Also, was it passing validation explicitly part of the agreement?
it appears to work fine in browsers... no, not in agreement... I still consider this a site flaw.... some say it is important, some say not so....
Much as I hate to say it, if the site works in all the newest major browsers, and passing W3 validation was not part of the deal, then I'd say he'd done his job. It might not seem fair, but to be honest I've never thought about W3 validation when employing a coder as I was more concerned with the functionality (I probably will now!). I'm sure other will disagree, but I'd say you'd be better off paying him as he's done the job that was requested then put it down as a lesson learned.
I also personally don't feel it's that important as long as the site works well across different browsers. Validation is something that's fairly simple to do (most times), just takes time to go through the errors, I feel if the site is working well already, save yourself some money and work on the validation part yourself when you have spare time.
well it depends if the agreement you made with your coder is just to create a site, this means that he is done after he finish developed the site. -create a site (maybe you only just discuss this to him) -W3 standards (another job) -security works (another job) -seo (another job) there are many factors that you need to tackle if you want these stuff to be taken care (if you haven't talked about this to your coder at first don't expect him to do these since its out of his scope)
I guess what really matters is if the coder promised it would validate and it was discussed that it was a condition. If he said he would make sure it would validate and it doesn't then you can hold him too that, where he should not have agreed in the first place. Other than that... all things being equal.. it usually doesn't matter. HOWEVER... If you validate the code, atleast you can rest assured that there isn't any problems with the code and can rule out code being an issue if there is a problem of some sort. In that respect, I still think that it is very useful to validate. I am very big on validation, but I have one major thing that bothers me with it. Validating strict means you cannot open a link in a new window without going the javascript route... I found that to be quite retarded.
If the site does the main functions then you have no issues. perhaps those errors are more warnings which i suspect many are due to limitations in the coding language.
well most companies will certainly validate but they dont have to. Seems like a not very serious company if they dont manage to verify their sites.
If the site is finished and works properly in all major browsers the job is done unless you specifically instead at the beginning the your site should have 0 errors with the w3c tool. For example cnn.com has 104 errors.
Those validators are for people that subscribe to the way the W3C people think. The W3C people think they know best how to build a website and try to force standards on everyone else. If it mattered even one single bit about validating with those silly validators, 90% of today's websites would be in big trouble. Sites like Ebay, Amazon, CNN, USA Today, etc, would all be doing badly in the serps. But I hardly think that is the case. Worry about your content and forget about the idiots at the W3C. It's just a bunch of Hoo Ha! John
Just uphold whatever you both agreed to. Just pay him already. If you really want the validation thing to be sorted out, contact him again and pay extra.
Regarding validation, Matt Cutts had some interesting statements on the subject: [video=youtube;FPBACTS-tyg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBACTS-tyg[/video]
lolz how it validate the website ? i check Google.com on it and found 35 Errors, 2 warning(s) so you should pay him
If you didn't require W3C validation as part of your agreement, you don't really have any grounds to insist on it. As long as the site displays correctly in the major browsers, your coder has done his job.
Well if the site works as intended on major browsers then I guess its not a big deal unless you had an agreement that the site needs to be w3c compliant. However on the other hand, being a Programmer myself if a client insists to have the script w3c compliant I would surely give it a shot (in reality I do follow w3c standards) even if it was not in the contract/agreement... The no. of errors might seem huge but when you clear off some of the errors. the associated errors will also disappear.. so I guess it should be a fairly easy job for someone who is good in html/css coding. Looks like your programmer is too busy with some other project or simply not so proficient with html tagging thats why he is ignoring to complete that... Also just curious are you more concerned as to a site needs to be w3c compliant or you want to sue your Programmer (as you posted in this forum section)?