This is the second tab where you set up options that affect the validation engine and its output. The validator options are divided into more than one tab because of the large number of options that are available.
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 rare 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 generate warning messages for characters with values 128-159 (inclusive). 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 entire HTML document, even if there are sections in the document that are set to be ignored. Note also that character references can (and often should) be used as an alternative to using Windows character set specific characters in HTML 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) |
| • | Ignore attributes with colons - Check this box to ignore attributes with colons (:) in the name if there is no attribute with the same name in the configuration. If checked and there are attributes that have been ignored due to this option, then a message will be generated with the number of attributes ignored. This option is enabled by default. (New v9.00) |
