15-Minute Reviews :: CSE HTML Validator Standard v8.04

Greetings and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is CSE HTML Validator Standard version 8.04 by AI Internet Solutions – An application designed for web designers offering a text-based HTML editor as well as syntax validation, accessibility checking and more.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“CSE HTML Validator for Microsoft Windows is a powerful, easy to use, user configurable, and all-in-one HTML, XHTML, CSS, link, spelling, and accessibility checker. CSE HTML Validator helps eliminate website problems that cause visitors to leave your website. It increases your productivity and saves you time and money.

Unlike many other HTML checkers, CSE HTML Validator features an unusually powerful custom syntax checking engine that is specifically designed to check HTML, XHTML, and CSS.”

Quick Pros

• Tabbed windows allows you to work on multiple files at the same time
• Code highlighting minimal, but functional
• Plenty of options for setting up the validator how you want it to run
• Tag insertion for aiding with building pages
• Scans are quick and relay much pertinent information
• Accessibility checker, style and link checkers handy for maintaining a high-quality pageset

Quick Cons

• Found interface awkward – A lot of ‘wading’ in menus to find functionality
• Message windows on bottom of page not easy to wade through
• Found same errors as W3C’s checker during testing, but not as descriptive
• Undo/redo had double confirmation boxes
• Could use advanced features such as FTP, autocomplete and more

Expansion

Normally I find many interfaces for applications very useful and easy to use; This application does offer tabbed windows, easy-access tag insertion bar, simple but usable code highlighting and many other goodies (Line numbering, word wrap and screen-splitting). However, I did find the user interface awkward to use for much of the application. The menus are overstuffed badly and hard to find needed options quickly, though with time I figure I’d become more accustomed to the menu layout.The author does provide a lot of keyboard shortcuts, which is great, but the number of keyboard shortcuts is staggering and in itself would be a learning curve as well, though could significantly improve usability. The windows at the bottom of the screen for reporting the checkers’ findings is not well laid out in my opinion; You can’t see the entire message in the main tabbed window, so you have to either click or scroll down to the next option to see the body of the message in the message window as well; That said, I found that even the message window is sometimes too small and has to be scrolled within or the entire lower half of the window enlarged; To feel less cramped, you would definitely have to work at higher resolutions than I tested at and full screen to feel ‘comfortable’ in the application.

The validators do have some redeeming qualities however. The main validator (HTML) works pretty well and does explain the general issues with a page. It hit the same lines for errors/warnings with my sites as W3C’s and same general descriptions but the errors/warnings are less descriptive to the exact location of the error and the errors did vary some. W3C’s highlights the first part of the error, where this application highlights the entire error/warning portion. As well, while this application labels all 5 issues as warnings only, the W3 Validator fails me with 11 errors and 10 warnings; They all pertain to the same 5 lines of code, but W3C’s gives a lot more description of the errors. In my opinion the validator is accurate enough to be used for initial design, but I still would recommend a final test against W3C’s”:http://validator.w3.org/ validator.

The HTML validator is not the only feature for validation as well. There is also a CSS stylesheet, link and accessibility checker as well. I didn’t go into great detail testing the CSS stylesheet checker because it appears to dislike compressed CSS files (It tells me there is too many warnings, to fix the previous warnings and recheck, but there is no warnings at all besides this error). I did find the link checker was effective however for checking that specific page; It not only showed if the links were valid, but also showed if the links were 301 redirected or otherwise; Handy indeed if you want to ensure the link points to the new location in case the 301 redirect is ever removed. The accessibility checker I didn’t have a lot of time to go through, but it seems to be pretty informative as well and I would be happy to use this feature of this applications.

A few issues I did have beyond what is noted above; undo and redo are irritating at best; Two dialog boxes to confirm an undo or redo every time, and I couldn’t find how to disable them quickly (No checkbox in the dialogs themselves nor was there an option I could find quickly flipping through the options, though I may have passed it over with so many options.) The application could have also dealt with further functionality for the whole process including a built-in FTP client and a site manager, better code highlighting, autocomplete for while building/altering pages and even an on-the-fly validator (Say, to highlight elements which have not yet been closed or similar.

Final Verdict

While the link and accessibility validators seem to be effective (I would likely use just the accessibility validator if it were standalone), the fact that I feel like I have to validate the results of the HTML validator (or to see where the actual problem lies in the body of the code if it isn’t clear from this validator) and that the CSS validator doesn’t like compressed CSS (Which “W3C’s does handle) doesn’t give me a good feeling to incorporate this into my toolset. That said, I feel that the editor by itself doesn’t have enough power for an HTML editor and only does the bare minimum as an editor while still feeling over-complex. All-in-all, I’m not happy with it though you may have a better result from this application while it is free, I would likely not recommend purchasing this at a hefty price tag of $69 however until it is improved.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, August 09, 2007