Comments on: Drag N’ Validate

By: Unfiltered » Blog Archive » Hellboy Animated Statuette, 43 Folders Meets GTD and Dragon Validation

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:24:39 +0000

[...] Mike Davidson – Drag N’ ValidateMighty powerful dreams….never out of reach….ok fine, I have no idea what they’re talking about. Leave me alone! :p Filed under: News | [...]

By: Chad Edge

Chad Edge — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

on it. I’d love to see something like this as well.

how about a contextual menu for launching textmate and then running a bundle?

probably applescript could do it :)

Let’s see how far I get. pretty much guarantee someone that reads your blog that’s *not* hopped up on pain medication (broken arm, torn tendon, missing teeth) will get it done faster, but I’ll give it my best :)

By: Tom Richards

Tom Richards — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Since it looks like you’re using Safari, try this:

http://www.zappatic.net/safaritidy/

It doesn’t do exactly what you’re looking for, but it does validate the page automatically, and then adds a nice little table at the bottom of your “View Source” window that gives the line number, column number, type of problem (warning or error) and finally info on the error.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chad: Nice. Also, to any readers who *are* on pain medication (the good kind) and have any left over, e-mail me.

Tom: Yeah, I’ve tried Safari Tidy, but my problem is that I’m generally only interested in a snippet. My response to most validators is basically “yes, mofo, I *know* our ad server puts a million ampersands in the page… just show me the real errors please.”

By: Mike Rundle

Mike Rundle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fuck validation man, if it works in IE5 then that’s all I care about! Boo ya bitches!

By: Dale Cruse

Dale Cruse — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

IE5?! Listen up, FutureBoy, I say that Lynx is here to stay!

By: Jeff Croft

Jeff Croft — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Not quite as good, but if you paste that code into TextMate instead of a sticky note you’ll get the indenting and validation almost for free. :)

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Firefox View Source Chart Plugin (aka View Rendered Source) is a quick way to see where your tags are unbalanced, because it color codes them and draws boxes around them.This is one of the plugins I can't live without. If your unbalancing happens over a large portion of the screen (ie you have to scroll between the start/end tags) you can simply click on any of the boxes inside the tags you're interested in and it will collapse them.

By: Baxter

Baxter — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Does ANYONE care about ampersands, really?

Can anyone clearly and succinctly tell me how they could cause harm.

I usually try to correct them, where possible, just cause I LIKE things to validate, but I always feel stupid for spending the time worrying about them.

Mike, great idea!

By: Thomas Madrid

Thomas Madrid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Before I get into the tool I use, let me preface this by stating that I write my XHTML by hand, and by hand only. I used notepad to learn, and moved on to Homesite for the features. That being said, I use a feature in Dreamweaver to help visually validate and format XHTML. There’s an option that will perform all the indentation and such to a highlighted snippet or the whole document. Additionally, unclosed elements appear in highlighted yellow in design view.

By: Markus

Markus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@Thomas – What is that feature in Dreamweaver called?

I second the View Source Chart Plugin that Tom mentioned – great tool.

By: Bramus!

Bramus! — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The firefox Web Developer toolbar provides the option to submit the URL to the W3C validator (SHIFT+CTRL/CMD+H), or upload the current HTML source (SHIFT+CTRL/CMD+A).

Given that second option, it should not be that hard for any Firefox extension developer to write something like:
- get source of current selection, or get current selected source (if in source view).
- paste that source in an empty XHTML template (with head in place, and empty body).
- submit that code to the W3C validator.

Shouldn’t be that hard …

Or one could write a page with an input field where you can paste the code in … heck, as I’m typing this I better start off coding …

And yes, the results are in: “MikeValidator – Quick ‘n Dirty” for demo over at http://www.bram.us/mikevalidator/ ;)

wbr,
Bramus!

By: Bramus!

Bramus! — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

hmmz, the link ain't showing: http://www.bram.us/mikevalidator/ ;)

By: Tom von S.

Tom von S. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I usually open up a vim window, paste in the snippet and type ‘gg=G’ to re-indent everything. Thats:

gg – move cursor to top of the file
= – start auto-indenting
G – all the way to the bottom of the file

Back when I was but a foolish newb I would type ‘ggVG=’. HAH!

Crazy.

By: Bramus!

Bramus! — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

And about the tabbing … Dreamweaver has this nifty option named “Apply Source Code Formatting”, but it does not have a shortcut unfortunately.

The Zend IDE also provides this option; the shortcut is SHIFT+CTRL+F and it has become one of my favorites :)