Does DTD Validation Matter?

S

Siah

Hi,

I am creating a web application, and have some custom attributes added.
My site works just fine and although it fails validation, I haven't
found enough motivation to spend time and validate it's DTD. Can anyone
provide me with some reason why I should invest such time?

Thanks for your input in advanced,
Sia-f
 
J

Jim Higson

Siah said:
Hi,

I am creating a web application, and have some custom attributes added.
My site works just fine and although it fails validation, I haven't
found enough motivation to spend time and validate it's DTD. Can anyone
provide me with some reason why I should invest such time?

Maybe you should at least put the attributes in your own namespace. That way
you clearly mark them as custom.

What are your custom attributes for? Inventing your own attributes isn't
very often needed. However...

<confession>
I sometimes put a "regex" attribute on form elements to validate user input
against using Javascript (I also validate against the same regex server
side).
</confession>

I'll probably change this one day.
 
S

Siah

Thanks for your response Jim,

Some ajax behavioral parameters that tells the client what to do with
new data, there are some form validation rules and some dirty hacks
just to get my ajax web app work smoothly.

I'm not quite clear though. Does it or does it not matter for me to get
my DTD validated. The issues I could be concerned with not having DTD
validated are slower html parsing, Browser incompatibility and
unexpected behavior.

Thanks,
Sia
 
A

Andy Dingley

Siah said:
I am creating a web application, and have some custom attributes added.
My site works just fine and although it fails validation, I haven't
found enough motivation to spend time and validate it's DTD.

Validation should never just be ignored - but if you know what you're
doing, you can choose to live with the invalidity. Validation is a
convenient objective proof that the code isn't broken, so discounting
validation means that you have to demonstrate this by some other more
complex means (such as validation with a known list of exceptions that
are known to be safe).
 

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