General
If you have a problem that isn't covered below then complete the feedback form on the main website to report it. Don't forget to leave a valid email address where you can be contacted.
Start up issues
Please ensure that you have the latest version of the tool installed as some older versions did have start up problems that have now been fixed.
You must have Java installed in order to run the tool. The tool requires Java Runtime Environment version 1.5.0 (also known as JRE 5.0) or higher. On Windows, if the tool cannot find a suitable version of Java when it tries to start you will be prompted to run your default browser and then taken to the official site where you can download and install the latest version. Alternatively you can download a local version of Java, which is used just by the tool.
With Linux installations You must have Java 1.5.0 or above installed and this must be in your PATH. Type 'java -version' at the command prompt to check this. Alternatively, make your own copy of the *.sh scripts in the installation folder and amend them to point to wherever you've installed Java.
If you have any other start up issue then make a note of any error messages that may appear and use the feedback form to report your problem. Don't forget to leave a valid email address where you can be contacted.
Your browser doesn't show the results
When the validation is finished your browser should start up and display the results. If this doesn't happen, first check that 'Hide results' in the Options menu has not been accidentally selected. If it has then not selecting this option should resolve the issue.
Otherwise try using the 'Last Results' button. If this doesn't either then check the browser you have selected to display the results on the Basic tab. If this is blank and nothing else is obviously wrong then it's likely that you have a browser installed that is not set as the 'default'. You can correct this for popular browsers as follows:
Windows/Mac: If Firefox is your preferred browser then open it and go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Options' then 'General' and you will find an option which allows you to set it as the default browser.
If Internet Explorer is your preferred browser then open it and go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Internet Options' then 'Programs' and tick the box that says that IE should check to see if it is the default browser. Then restart IE and you will be prompted to confirm IE as your default browser. In either case then try running the Total Validator Tool again.
Linux: Edit the script 'totalvalidatorpro/default_browser.sh' or 'totalvalidatorbasic/default_browser.sh' as appropriate and check that it points to your preferred browser. As an additional check if you simply run this script without any parameters then your browser should just start up normally.
If you are still having problems then navigate to the folder where the results are stored and manually launch your browser pointing at the first results page.
Authentication issues
If you are using the Basic tool then there are no options available to allow you to authenticate yourself to either a web server or a proxy server.
If you are using the Pro tool and you still can't authenticate yourself to either a web server or a proxy server, then please check that you are using the authentication options correctly (especially for Windows/NTLM authentication). If you still have problems then complete the feedback form on the main website to report them.
Performance issues
There could be several reasons why the tool may appear to operate slowly when checking each page. Obviously it could be that your system has reached the limit of its own performance in terms of CPU power and/or the amount of available memory. However there are several things you can try to improve matters as listed below:
- Try to limit the number of other applications that are running concurrently
- When checking remote pages close any other applications that may be using the network
- The broken links option waits for a response from remote sites. If you do have any broken links then this will naturally slow down the tool. With the Pro tool you could reduce the timeout from the default of 20 seconds down to 10 seconds and raise the concurrency (or set to 0 for unlimited). Alternatively turn off the broken link check altogether to see if this improves things.
- The spell check has a double impact on performance. It uses a lot of memory loading the dictionary, and it can take time to spell check each word. So try turning this option off when checking pages to see if this helps.
If none of the above work and you have sufficient memory then you could try increasing the amount of memory used by the tool.
Another error message is displayed
Many error messages are self explanatory and you should correct whatever the problem is.
If you have a message that doesn't make sense then make a note of it and complete the feedback form on the main website to report your problem. Don't forget to leave a valid email address where you can be contacted.
Incorrect results
Unlike many popular validation services (such as HTML Tidy) Total Validator uses the official W3C and ISO DTDs for HTML validation and the tests are automated from these. In other words we haven't personally made up the validation rules or translated them. So if TV finds a problem on your page (or fails to find one) then it's highly likely that it's in the W3C DTD's and not a mistake in TV.
Many other validators do not use the official DTDs but are 'translations' of them. The most popular example is HTML Tidy. Because these do not use the official DTDs they tend to be rife with mistakes. HTML Tidy for example reports the 'type' attribute in the <link> element as being mandatory. This is wrong and doesn't even make sense.
However, the official DTD's cannot encode all the rules, because of the limitations of the DTD language. So we've added a whole lot of additional tests to cover these limitations. So other validators that only use the official DTDs may miss errors that are there in the standards. For example the W3C validator doesn't check the value of attributes and so will report success even when your page has many mistakes.
So before you report that another validator says that your page is okay, or reports errors that Total Validator doesn't pick up, please check the actual standards first, don't just assume the other validator is right. Note that we wrote TV initially because of mistakes and limitations with other popular validators.
Accessibility results
Remember that the accessibility standards are guidelines and not rules. They can't possibly cover every situation and are there to guide you into making good decisions.
You need a human with their brain switched on to check a page for accessibility. Automated validators (even TV) can only guide you and should never be regarded as a stamp of approval. Never let zero errors and warnings be your only target. Bear in mind that it is quite easy to write a web page that passes all the tests of all the validators and yet would still be difficult for people with disabilities to use.
So you should check your pages against the guidelines manually ensure they meet your accessibility requirements and only then use Total Validator to check for anything you may have missed or after making minor amendments.
With TV we've tried to follow the spirit and meaning of the WAI and Section 508 guidelines, rather than blindly coding rules. So you may find 'errors' picked up by other validators that simply don't appear in our results. Before you put pen to paper to berate us check out the guidelines themselves first as these 'errors' may be wrong.
Some specific things of note: User-agents are much better than they were when the WAI guidelines were first conceived. As a result many of the WCAG v1 guidelines are now redundant. For example there is no longer a requirement to put place holding text in edit boxes and text areas. This was 10.4 of WCAG v1.0 (AAA). Similarly 1.5 of WCAG v1.0 (AAA) is no longer required. So always validate using the lastest standards.