This is where you set up options that affect the validation engine and its output. The validator options are divided into multiple tabs because of the large number of options that are available.
Note that several of these options are designed for XHTML support.
Validator 1 Options
Edit Boxes
| • | Maximum errors - This edit box lets you specify the number of errors that CSE HTML Validator will generate for a single HTML document before terminating the validation due to too many errors. It is recommended that you do not set this to more than 20 errors, since one "true" error can cause many other "phantom" errors to be generated that may not necessarily provide useful information. Correct the first few errors of a document, and then revalidate it to see how the correction of the first few errors affect the remaining errors; they may all disappear. The default is 20 errors. Accepted values range from 1 to 9999, inclusive, although values over 20 are not recommended. |
| • | Maximum warnings - This edit box lets you specify the number of warnings that CSE HTML Validator will generate for a single HTML document before terminating the validation due to too many warnings. The default is 20 warnings. Accepted values range from 1 to 9999, inclusive, although values over 20 are not recommended. |
Message/Output Options
| • | Show warnings - Check this box to show any warning messages that are generated during a validation. This box must be checked to receive any warning messages, even if Show comment warnings is checked. It is highly recommended that you keep this option enabled (most warning messages are usually important). This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Show comment warnings - Check this box to show warning messages when a comment in the form <!-- --> contains '<' and '>' characters. This option only has an effect if Show warnings is checked. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Show missing attribute warnings - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to show warning messages for missing attributes that have the Warn if missing option checked. This option only has an effect if Show warnings is checked. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Show messages - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to show any non-error, non-warning, and non-comment messages generated when a HTML document is validated. These messages typically have a blue box in front of them when displayed in the Results Window and contain miscellaneous and generally useful information. Note that messages in the context of this option are messages generated by the validator engine that are not errors, warnings, or comments. It is highly recommended that you keep this option enabled. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Show comments - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to show comment messages generated when an HTML document is validated. These comments may provide you with useful information. Some comments are dependent on the kind of errors and warnings generated. It is recommended that you keep this option enabled and that you read any comments that are produced. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Show extended message info - Check this box if you want to enable extended messages. Currently extended messages include displaying the actual valid and invalid range when a tag is out of range, displaying the valid attributes when an invalid attribute is used, and displaying the valid attribute values for an attribute when an invalid attribute value is used. Disabling extended messages simplify certain messages but also reduce the amount of information contained in them. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Change warning messages to error messages - Check this box to change warning messages to error messages. You may want to check this box if you consider warning messages to be as serious as error messages and therefore want warning messages to be treated the same as error messages. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Enable override by message ID - ( Pro, Std,  Lite) Most (but not all) validator messages have a unique message ID. This unique message ID can be used to disable individual messages or to change an individual message's type (for example, from a warning to an error). This is normally done by bringing up the context menu for the individual message and choosing an option under Options for this Message. When Enable override by message ID is checked, changes to messages by message ID will take effect (this is the default). This means that if you disabled an individual message or changed a message's type, then the change that you made will override the default state. If this option is unchecked, then the changes will not override the default state but the messages that would have been affected if this option were checked will be indicated by an [OVERRIDE ...] string in the message. By temporarily unchecking this option, you can see what changes have been made and you can enable a message that has previously been disabled. This option is enabled by default. |
Spell Checking Options (Pro, Std, Lite)
These spell checking options affect the spell checker in the validator engine, not in the editor. CSE HTML Validator Lite supports editor spell checking but not validator engine spell checking.
| • | Enable spell checking - Check this box to enable a validator spell checking message containing a list of words that may be misspelled. By default, the list is limited to 50 words but this limit can be changed by changing "MaxMisspelledWordsInMessage" in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AI Internet Solutions\CSE HTML Validator v4\Validator DLL\Validator" in the registry. Enabling spell checking will result in slightly slower validations, especially when using HTML Validator with most third party tools because the dictionary may need to be loaded for every validation. If you want faster validations, then disabling spell checking may slightly speed up validations. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Check spelling in comments - Check this box to enable spell checking for words that are contained in HTML comments. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Check '#' comments - Check this box to check the spelling in comments that have '#' as the first non-whitespace character after "<!--" or "<!", otherwise these comments are not spell checked. Comments starting with exactly "<!--#" are considered server-side includes (SSIs) and will not be spell checked regardless of this option. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Restore - Press this button to restore the message ID settings for the spelling message. This option may be used to make the spelling message reappear in the validation results when the Enable spell checking option is enabled but the spelling message has been disabled with the message ID feature. If the message type of the spelling message has also been changed using the message ID feature, this will restore the message type back to the default. |
| • | Display misspelled word list message as a warning instead of a comment - Check this box if you want the message containing the words that may be misspelled to be a warning message instead of a comment message. Warning messages normally cause an "error or warning" sound at the end of a validation but comment messages do not. By controlling whether the misspelled word list message is a warning or comment message, you have some control over how severe misspelled words are when they occur and whether an "error or warning" sound is generated. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Include the # of times a word has been misspelled in the misspelled word list msg - This is best explained using an example: If you have used the misspelled word "validater" three times and this option is checked, "validater" will be displayed in the misspelled word list as "validater (3x)" to indicate that you have misspelled it three times. If this option is unchecked, then it will be displayed as "validater" with no indication of how many times this word was found. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Sort misspelled word list by number of occurrences of the misspelled word instead of alphabetically - Check this option to sort the misspelled word list in ascending (increasing) order by the number of times the misspelled word was found. Usually misspelled words will only be misspelled once and therefore would appear at the beginning of the misspelled word list if this option is checked. Words that are correct but not in the dictionary are likely to be repeated more than once and, therefore, to be at the end of the list if this option is checked. Words misspelled the same number of times are sorted alphabetically within the subsection of the list that contains words misspelled the same number of times. If this option is not checked, then the list is sorted alphabetically. This option is enabled by default. |
NOTE: Words contained in tags that are marked as "ignore to close" (like "style" and "script") are not checked. This is true even if the words are in comments and Check spelling in comments is checked.
NOTE: The above options affect spell checking as done by the validator engine. Spell checking from the integrated editor is different. These options do not affect the spell check when done using the Spell Check tool in the integrated editor.
Validator 2 Options
Character Reference Options
| • | Validate references - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to validate character references (both numeric and symbolic). It is recommended that you keep this box checked. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Numeric references include Unicode - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to validate 16-bit Unicode numeric character references. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Allow hexadecimal numeric references - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to allow hexadecimal numeric character references. These references are in the form "&#xH;", where H is a hexadecimal number. Note that some older browsers may not support hexadecimal references. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Allow " in text - Check this box if you do not want HTML Validator to generate error messages when you use the double quotation (") mark in the text portion of HTML documents. If unchecked, then HTML Validator will generate errors when quotation marks are used where the character reference """ should be used instead. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Check references in attribute values - Check this box to generate warning messages for incorrect references in attribute values. This also finds the common problem of not encoding ampersands as "&". This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Allow numeric references 128-159 - Check this box to allow numeric references from € to Ÿ. In the standard Internet character sets, these characters are control characters so they should not be used even though they may seem to work well with some browsers like Internet Explorer. However, there may be some limited cases where these characters work better for your needs than the substitute standard Internet characters. In this case, you may want to check this option. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Allow numeric references 0-65536 - Check this box to allow numeric references from � to 𐀀. If you encounter a rare situation where a numeric character reference that you are sure you want is not being accepted, then you may want to check this box to accept them all. This option is not enabled by default. (New v8.00) |
Miscellaneous Options
| • | Check HTML tag nesting - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to report potential nesting problems from such input as <h1>HTML Validator <i>Released!</h1></i>. Here, the heading tag is closed before the italics tag is closed, even though the heading tag was opened first, resulting in a nesting error. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Allow spaces around '=' - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to not generate warning messages for attributes that have spaces before or after the equal sign. For example, if this box is not checked, align = center and align= center will generate warning messages due to the spaces around the equal sign. If this box is checked, spaces around the equal sign do not generate validation warnings. According to HTML 4.0, spaces are valid around '=' when assigning values to attributes. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Tag range always valid - Check this box to override range checking of tag names. If a tag name's category is active, the tag will always be in valid range. It is strongly recommended that you keep this option unchecked unless you have a good reason to enable it. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Check for high ASCII characters - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to report "high ASCII" characters as warnings. A high ASCII character is considered to be a character with an ASCII value of over 127. Note that this option checks the whole HTML document, even if there are sections in the document that are set to be ignored. Note also that you can use character references as an alternative to using high ASCII characters in your documents. However, it is technically acceptable, when using an appropriate character encoding, to use high ASCII characters (such as accented letters and some punctuation marks) in your documents and to not encode them with character entities. The only time character entities should typically be used is when using control characters such as <, >, and &. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Allow multi-line quotes - Check this box if you want to be able to have parts of the same quoted string on more than one line. It is usually best to keep this box unchecked and to keep your entire quoted string on a single line. This makes it easier for you to find errors when an opening or closing quotation mark is missing, which often causes numerous errors to be generated. It is also likely that having a quoted string that is broken up onto two or more lines may cause problems or confusion with some browsers. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Require quoted attribute values - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to require that all attribute values be in quotation marks. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Allow spaces such as in <b > - Check this box to allow spaces immediately before the closing '>' character in a tag. With this option checked, tags such as <b > will not generate warnings due to the spaces in the tags. It is recommended that you leave this option unchecked for good style and to avoid possible problems caused by these spaces. Spaces immediately after the opening '<' character of a tag will generate an error message regardless of this setting. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Require optional end tags - Check this box if you want to require that all tags having optional end tags instead have required end tags. For example, <p> has an optional end tag if this option is unchecked. If this option is checked, then errors will be generated if there is not a matching </p> end tag for each <p> start tag. This may be useful for writing better HTML that is more like XHTML, for educational purposes, or for anyone whose style is to close all tags. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Ignore text in <% ... %> - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to ignore text (usually server side scripts for Microsoft IIS) between '<%' and '%>' strings. (Note that similar processing is always done to ignore PHP blocks). This option is enabled by default. |
| • | <!-- ... --> Strict comments - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to generate error messages for comments not in the <!-- ... --> format. A comment such as <! Document modified 2/09/06 > will generate errors if this box is checked. It is recommended that you keep this box checked and use this format of comment in your documents. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | (first tag) can be anywhere - Check this box if you want any tags with (first tag) as the valid range to be valid anywhere. Otherwise if (first tag) is the only valid range for the tag, then it must be the first tag in the document (normally the first tag in a document should be the "html" tag). This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Treat all quotes as equivalent - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to treat single and double quotes as equivalent when they are used to enclose attribute values. This function will cause an attribute value that is enclosed in single quotes not to generate an error message if the configuration requires that the value must be enclosed in double quotes, because the single quotes are 'equivalent' to the double quotes. You should keep this option enabled if your documents are written for 'modern' browsers that should not have problems with using single quotes. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | <% ... %> in tags to 'ASP' - Check this box to replace/change any <% ... %> block occurring in a tag to 'ASP'. This minimizes the number of errors HTML Validator generates due to using <% ... %> blocks in tags. This option has no effect if Ignore text in <% ... %> is not checked. (Note that similar processing is always done for PHP blocks and Miva macros). This option is enabled by default. |
| • | XML compatibility - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to understand quick close tags like <img src="picture.gif"/>. HTML Validator will also make sure that any quick close tags like the above cannot have another, separate end tag. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Ignore all quotation reqs - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to ignore all quotation requirements for attribute values. HTML Validator will not generate error messages due to quoting or failing to quote any attribute values. It is recommended that you keep this option unchecked. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Req. lowercase tags and attributes - Check this box if you want to generate error messages for start tags, end tags, or tag attribute names that contain uppercase characters. This does not check attribute values. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Require quick close (<br/>) - Check this box if you want to generate error messages for tags that do not have an end tag (like </tagname>) and are not in the format <tagname ... />. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Warn if no space before '/' - Check this box to generate a warning message when there is no space before the '/' character in an XML style empty tag. It is a good idea to include these spaces in XHTML documents for backward compatibility with HTML. With this option checked, using <br/> would generate a warning while <br /> would not. This option is automatically enabled for XHTML documents by the included configuration file. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Require attribute values - Check this box to require that ALL attribute names have attribute values. This option should be checked for XML or XHTML style documents. The default configuration file that is included with HTML Validator will automatically enable this option if an XHTML document is detected. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Ignore tags with colons - Check this box so that tag names with a colon in them are ignored (such as "jsp:useBean"). This will also ignore all attributes and attribute values for that tag. This option will not ignore end tags with a colon but an end tag with a colon for a previously ignored start tag with a colon is OK. This option will not ignore tag names that are included in the configuration. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Stop checking after </html> - Check this box to stop syntax checking after the "html" end tag. This option is useful for checking dynamic pages that may contain debug information after the "html" end tag. This option is not enabled by default. |
| • | Check for characters 128-159 - Check this box if you want HTML Validator to report characters with values 128-159 (inclusive) as warnings. These are often characters in Windows character sets that may not display properly in user agents, especially on non-Windows based platforms. Note that this option checks the whole HTML document, even if there are sections in the document that are set to be ignored. Note also that you can use character references as an alternative to using Windows character set specific characters in your documents. You may want to disable this option If you're sure that these characters will be interpreted and displayed properly by all the visiting user agents. This option is enabled by default. |
| • | Ignore unknown tags in asp:* - Check this box to ignore unknown/unrecognized tags that are contained in an "asp:*" element like "asp:Label". This is useful for ASP.NET development. This option is enabled by default. (New v8.00) |
| • | Recover mismatched quotes - Check this box to try to detect and recover from mismatched quotes. Uncheck this box if CSE HTML Validator thinks there are missing quotes when there really aren't (if so, then please report this to us). This option is enabled by default. (New v8.00) |
