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Using the Tools

To use one of these tools, simply select the tool you wish to use from the Tools Menu. For most tools, HTML Validator will use the currently selected document in the editor as the source document for the tool. For other tools, such as the Convert Text File Format Tool, HTML Validator will prompt you for the document that you wish to process with the selected tool. Enter the filename of the document to process and press the Open button in the dialog box. HTML Validator will then rename the selected file with a ".bak" extension and replace the original filename with the processed file. The ".bak" file will be automatically deleted if the Tools leave .bak files on disk options in the Validator Engine Options, Tools tab is not checked.

Multiple files can be quickly processed with a tool using the Drag and Drop Window. To view this window, use the menu option Drag and Drop->View Drag and Drop Window. Use the Drag and Drop Default Tool Select Dialog Box to select what tool to use and then drag and drop the files that you want to process onto the Drag and Drop Window. For example, select the files (one or more) that you want to process in Windows Explorer and then drag and drop them onto the Drag and Drop Window. You can drop many files at once onto the Drag and Drop Window.

If you are using the professional edition, then you can also use the Batch Wizard to easily process multiple files with a tool. CSE HTML Validator Professional also supports a Link Check tool that allows you to easily check the links of a web site.

NOTE: All tools should work on Unix and Macintosh files as well as MS-DOS text files, however, they will all produce an MS-DOS file that can then be converted to another type if necessary.

Convert Text File Format Tool - This tool replaces CR, LF, or CRLF characters with new end of line characters that depend on the text file format selected in the Tools tab of the Validator Engine Options Dialog Box. If you are working with Unix text files (such as HTML documents) for instance, you can convert them to an MS-DOS text file format by specifying MS-DOS format in the program options and then using this tool to convert the file. You can then edit these files with Notepad or another text editor on your PC. One very useful feature of this tool is that you can convert entire folders of files simply by dragging and dropping all of the files in a folder onto HTML Validator's Drag and Drop Window and using this tool on the dragged and dropped files. Note that if you try to convert an MS-DOS file to MS-DOS, Unix to Unix, or Mac to Mac, this tool will do nothing to the file, so you don't have to worry about having already converted the documents.
HTML Tidy Tool - This is a powerful tool that uses HTML Tidy to automatically fix certain mistakes and problems, convert documents to/from HTML and XHTML, and reformat ("pretty print") documents. There are two "versions", or methods of using this tool. One is with the HTML Tidy Tool Dialog Box and another without it. With the dialog box method, you can preview the results and change the options until you are satisfied or you choose to cancel. When the dialog box method is not used, HTML Tidy is run with the current options and the results are automatically accepted (no dialog box is displayed).
Quick Lowercase Tool - Processing a file with this tool will change all alphabetic characters between the characters < and > to lowercase. Exceptions are characters in tags that are enclosed in double or single quotation marks, characters between <! and >, and characters between  (comments). This tool will also ignore characters in ASP and PHP blocks. Be careful! If you have certain improper syntax in the document (such as in scripts), it may not work properly. You should always keep backups of your previous work.
Quick Quote Tool - This tool attempts to enclose all attribute values in double quotes if the attribute value is not already in single or double quotation marks. (New v6.00)
Quick Strip HTML Tags Tool - This tool attempts to strip all HTML tags and their attributes from an HTML document and leave only text information with no HTML. Character entities are not removed.
Quick Uppercase Tool - This performs the same operation as the lowercase tool except that lowercase alphabetic characters are converted to uppercase.
Template Tool - This is probably the most useful and powerful tool available from HTML Validator. This tool allows you to create HTML documents based on a certain template. If you then need to later change the template it was based on, simply change the template file and then reprocess all of the HTML documents with this tool (you can simply drag and drop your HTML documents onto HTML Validator's Drag and Drop Window to quickly reprocess them with the template tool, or you can use the Batch Wizard). More information (by example) about using the template tool is also available.

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