As an avid web designer, I like to see and code that is clean and works without errors. If you're new to HTML, or even a veteran - you may not have become familiar with validating your code. Validating code helps to ensure that all browsers render your page the way which you coded it to do so. When designing many layouts, a simple error has been caused by an unclosed tag - or even a tag closing an unopened tag! So now you should see why validating your code is so important!

For all of your (X)HTML Validation, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) organisation have provided a mark-up validation service, which I find to be very helpful. By using their validation service, you can easily validate code via the page URL, file upload, or direct input. Where the validation service finds errors, it will give you tips on how to correct them. However, if your page renders completely valid, you'll be given a nice little button which you can parade around with on your site!

Secondly, the W3C also provide a CSS validation service, which can come in handy if your new style just isn't working right. The CSS validation service is very similar to the (X)HTML validation service, giving you three options of code input, and when the validation service finishes processing your code it will print a list of errors and how to fix them, as well as the valid CSS code!

In summary, should you have a remote interest in web design, you should find the W3C's validation service immensely interesting. However, prevention is far better than a cure - so learning how to code valid (X)HTML/CSS is a much better learning experience, which I find much less bothersome to do. In the end, it's up to you whether you run each page through the validation service before publishing it, maybe even running the home page through the validation service to see if it's valid (so you know it should be browser friendly), or not even validating a single page in your lifespan! However, I've concluded that the W3C's validation service has helped me solve multiple rendering problems, and hopefully you will too.