One tool I use on a regular basis is HTML Tidy, whether working on my own code or someone else's. It is available on all platforms, both as a command line tool or a GUI, and is built into many HTML editors. There are even online versions.
It fixes up many coding errors, can convert from ASCII to UTF-8 and back, fixes incorrect URLs, and loads of other helpful things. Yet most coders I speak to have never heard of it.
Do you Tidy your code?
Cordially, David
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"Old web developers don't die, they degrade gracefully..."
methode posted this at 05:57 — 16th July 2008.
They have: 10 posts
Joined: Jun 2008
If I'm not mistaken the W3 validators are (partially) based on Tidy, so I guess most of us uses it even if we don't know. The only difference is that in the validators' case it throws a warning, doesn't try to fix anything.
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Megan posted this at 12:59 — 16th July 2008.
She has: 10,288 posts
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I've heard of it but never really felt the need to use it, basically because I feel my code is good enough as it is. I guess I should give it a try and see what kind of changes it makes...
Megan
My web design blog
kazimmerman posted this at 13:19 — 16th July 2008.
He has: 579 posts
Joined: Jul 2005
The editor I use actually has HTML Tidy built in, so every now and then I'll run it just to see what happens, but for the most part I have decent code, so it's not necessary.
It's a helpful tool to have built in to my editor though for more complex pages, just to be sure I have all my closing tags and everything.
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decibel.places posted this at 14:21 — 16th July 2008.
They have: 668 posts
Joined: Jun 2008
About 7 years ago I had an editor with Tidy that would mangle any file I gave it.
Guess the current version is better.
But I just try to write good code, sometimes I check in the FFox cconsole for errors.
webwiz posted this at 20:29 — 16th July 2008.
He has: 335 posts
Joined: May 2007
If I'm not mistaken the W3 validators are (partially) based on Tidy
The validators check against the DTD you give in your DOCTYPE - Tidy will suggest a DOCTYPE if you don't have one. Two very different tools for different purposes.
About 7 years ago I had an editor with Tidy that would mangle any file I gave it.
Perhaps the settings were wrong. Tidy has a whole slew of options, such as getting rid of Word's HTML cruft, converting to XML, formatting the output any which way, and so on.
I imagine it's the sheer range of options that puts people off using it, as it take a while to get all the options to suit your needs.
Cordially, David
--
"Old web developers don't die, they degrade gracefully..."