Introduction to CSS Validator
Any code written in any programming language must always adhere to a set of rules and standards set for it. All the programming languages offer some or the other tools to validate that the code is following the best practices. Similar is the job of Validator in CSS. A CSS Validator makes sure that the CSS code is in accordance with the standards set for the language. These standards are set by W3 consortium for both HTML and CSS. Also, there is a high possibility in CSS, that if the code is not correct, it will function adversely to the expected behavior. This is where validator comes into play, and points out if the code is wrong.
Uses of CSS Validator
Validating your CSS code, primarily makes sure, that the code that is being compiled adheres to the standards that have been finalized by the W3 Consortium. CSS has partial support in browsers i.e not all the browsers always support all CSS features and properties. A CSS validator lets you know which feature is supported in which browser. There are two main advantages of validating your CSS code. Let’s discuss them in detail.
1. Cross-Platform Code
As discussed earlier, CSS sometimes shows browser-specific behavior. For example, a developer codes and styles his page of preference and run it on a specific browser and get the desired result. There is a chance that when the end-user explores the same page through some other browser, some features might not be displayed as they should be. This is because that particular browser does not support that feature. Also, there is also a possibility that different versions of the same browser may show variation in supporting various CSS and HTML features, which causes bugs and error in the deployed code. CSS Validator points these out so that the code can be modeled accordingly.
2. Search Engine Friendly
When a developer loads their pages to the web, each search engine parses the code for specific keywords, in their own manner or mechanism. Now, if the code has certain bugs or things that are unfathomable, the parsing can have different predictions. The search engine will decide on their own, how to deal with the errors and bugs. This will impact the visibility of the page. To avoid this, make sure that CSS and HTML code is validated.
There are various validators for CSS available online. Some of them are free of cost and some may charge.
How Does CSS Validator Work?
Let us see how the process of CSS Validation works:
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1. Validating CSS Using ‘https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/’.
- In this example, we will see the use of CSS validator. We will use the online validation offered by https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/.
- Once you go to this address, you will see a page as given in the screenshot below:
- You can give the URI or web address of the web which needs to be validated.
- If you are willing to give finer details, please click on More options, and fill in the finer details if required:
- On clicking Check Button, the validator will project the results. For eg,, on trying to validate the Google home page, we will get a validation result similar to this:
- To check further details, please follow the above steps and check.
2. Validating CSS Code using ‘http://csslint.net/’
- While the previous example showed how to validate the pages already deployed, this example gives an option to validate your raw CSS code, before deploying.
- Go to the page: http://csslint.net/. It will have a window to place your code.
- If you want to customize the validation process and get the code validated on certain specific criteria, click on the downward icon next to the LINT! button. A checklist will be available to customize your validation.
- After placing the code in the window, and customizing your validation (if required), click on LINT!. You will get the result of your code validation.
- In this example we tested this piece of CSS code:
div
width: 100px;
margin: 20px;
background: palegoldenrod;
border: 5px dotted lightskyblue;
box-shadow: inset 10px 10px 15px 15px white;
overflow-wrap:normal;
}
.class1{
font-style: italic;
overflow-wrap: break-word;
}
- The result for validation of the above CSS code snippet is as follows:
- Not only will the CSS code be validated, but this points out where exactly the issue is and also, one can get the suggestions on how to fix the errors and warnings.
3. Validating CSS code using ‘https://codebeautify.org/cssvalidate’.
- This CSS validator allows both URLs as well as raw code for validation.
- When you will visit the link https://codebeautify.org/cssvalidate, you will have a window to place the code as well as other options (validate the URL, etc).
- For this example, we will use the following CSS code snippet and check the validation:
#linear123
{
height: 150px;
width: 100px;
background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom, pink, green );
}
#linear246
{
height: 50px;
width: 300px;
background-image: linear-gradient(to right, blue, purple );
}
- After the placement of code in the required window and on clicking the Validate button, we will get the result entries on scrolling down the refreshed page. The validation result will be like:
- Hence a developer can make sure to standardize their code once the result of validation is projected.
In the above three examples, we saw how CSS Validator works. There are many other options available on the net, through which developers can standardize their CSS code. Many of these tools also validate HTML code as well. It is always a good idea to validate everything before putting anything on the world wide web. If online Validators are not satisfactory, there are many offline tools available for the same purpose too. But the base idea is to always opt for options which are genuine. This article gives a very basic idea of how to keep your CSS code in check. This is one of the practice will be lead to efficient code.
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