Compulsory new purchase?

[horsemuzzles]

Hello
When I opened my CSE HTML Validator Standard today, it gave me a message that an upgrade is available. When I followed the instructions to the upgrade, it says that I have to pay $31 CAD for it. That's a bit sneaky!! That's not an "upgrade" it's a "purchase". There are no details as to what benefits the new purchase offers. I hope that message does not pop up every time I use the software that I have already paid for. Since there are no apparent benefits, it implies the software has simply changed. Does this mean that the software I am now using will become obsolete and non-functional eventually?

[Albert Wiersch]

I'm sorry for the confusion. Major upgrades (like v10 to v11) may or may not be free, but minor upgrades (like v11.00 to v11.01) are always free.

The latest version is v11, and details of the improvements and changes are here:
http://www.htmlvalidator.com/htmlval/history.html

The upgrade message should not pop up every time.

The version you are using now will continue to function. The upgrade is not compulsory as you can continue to use the older version if you want. However, as time goes buy, it will get more and more out of date. We always recommend using the latest version, especially now that HTML5 and CSS3 are still changing and the HTML/CSS checking is always improving.