Total Validator
HTML / XHTML / WCAG / Section 508 / Links / Spelling

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Introduction

All of the options that appear on the Basic tab are described below. Note that some are only available with the Pro tool.

basic tool basic tab pro tool basic tab
Basic tool Pro tool

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Starting web page

Total Validator will validate the web page you specify using the validation options you've chosen.

The starting web page can either be a URL or a reference to a local file

If you have the Pro tool then you can validate more than one page by specifying this using the Pages option on the Basic tab. In this case the validation engine will start at the web page you specify and work it's way down through your website/filesystem validating each page. Note that it will never visit any pages 'above' the starting page in the website/filesystem. In effect it will not go to any pages with a shorter URL or path than the starting page. However, you can change this behaviour using the Remote Links option

If it is a URL this must be a full URL including the 'http://' part. You cannot supply a relative URL such as '../forms.html'.

If you are testing a local web page then you can either type in (or cut and paste) the path to the page, or use the Browse button to select the page you want to validate.

Use the Reset List menu option on the File menu to clear out the list.

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Number of pages (Pro tool only)

If you specify a value greater than "one" here the validation engine will follow any links to local pages from the starting web page, and check these pages as well until it has checked the number of pages required.

The fewer pages you check the quicker the validation will take. You often don't need to check your entire website, especially if most of the website uses templates and so is the same on every page. So just checking a portion of it should give you everything you need to correct your site, or give you confidence that it is still okay after deploying any changes.

The value that you enter here must be an integer (whole number) greater than zero, or leave the value blank to check all the pages it can find in your website.

when checking more than one page the validation engine works by checking every link in the order it finds them on each page. So it will check all the pages linked to the starting page before checking all the pages linked to the first page referenced by the starting page. Also because it is checking links even though you may not have selected the Check for broken links option, the Timeout and Concurrency options are still valid and will influence how quickly the checks will be performed

Note that when checking more than one page it may take quite some time to check all of the pages of your site

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Depth (Pro tool only)

This option allows you to restrict how many folders 'below' the starting page to check, based on the number of '/' characters in the link. So if you just wish to check the top few levels below the starting page then set how many here.

The value that you enter here must be an integer (whole number) greater than zero. Leave blank to visit all pages below the starting page.

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HTML validation

Select the specification you wish to test your page against from the drop down, or select the blank option if you do not wish to perform a HTML validation.

The Auto-detect option is usually the best option to select and uses the <!DOCTYPE> declaration on each page to select the DTD to use. If the <!DOCTYPE> is missing or unrecognised a best-fit algorithm will calculate the DTD that produces the fewest errors and will test against that instead.

The Best-fit option ignores any existing <!DOCTYPE> and uses the DTD that produces the fewest errors. This is a useful way of determining the best <!DOCTYPE> to attach to any page.

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Accessibility validation

Select this option if you wish to validate each page against the W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines (1.0 or 2.0) or US Section 508. There are three WAI levels to choose from for WCAG v1 covering the Priority 1, 2 and 3 guidelines: A, AA, and AAA. And three levels for the WCAG v2 guidelines: A2, AA2 and AAA2

Note that many of the published accessibility guidelines can only properly be tested through manual checking of your pages. That is why most accessibility validators typically display lots of largely irrelevant warnings with every page that is tested. Total Validator keeps things nice and simple and just displays errors and warnings for those tests that can be automated. But you must still manually check that your pages are accessible as passing any automated test isn't good enough. Tools such as Total Validator are best used to check your pages once you've made them accessible or following any minor changes to them.

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Spell check

Select this option to run the spelling validator if you wish to check the content of your page for spelling mistakes. You can choose to check against either American or British dictionaries of over 150,000 words each, French of over 130,000 words, Spanish of over 85,000 words, German of over 160,000 words, or Italian of over 60,000 words.

You can also include extra words that are not found in the supplied dictionaries, or use your own alternative dictionary using the Advanced Extra/Own dictionary option.

By default if the web page has a language set and this language is not compatible with the language chosen for spell checking, then a warning is added to the page and the spell check skipped. But with the Ignore web page language option you can force the spell check to proceed whatever the language of the web page.

Note that when you use the Spell check option it will take a little longer to check each web page.

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Check for broken links

If you choose this option (selected by default) the tool will check each link to ensure that it isn't broken.

Links to all resources such as CSS files, images, and scripts are checked as well as links to other web pages. Note that checking links can often be a time consuming process, especially if there are broken links on your pages, and especially if you are checking more than one page, so please be patient. However, use of the Advanced timeout and concurrency options may help speed things up.

If you are testing a local file then you may find a number of broken links on the results page. This is because relative links will be followed as if they are local files on your computer, and so if you don't have the file the link will appear broken. Similarly absolute URLs will be tested, and these may appear broken if you are working off-line or the URLs are inaccessible for any reason

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Show warnings

If you choose this option (selected by default) the tool will also show warning messages for problems which are not strictly errors, but which could help to make your pages better.

Note that spell checking problems are displayed as warnings, and these will always be displayed when you spell check your page whatever the setting here. The same also applies when reporting redirects

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Show on success

Normally pages with no problems are not displayed in detail. Use this option to display the layout of good pages. This can be useful if you have a redirected site and are unsure as to what has been validated.

In addition when checking more than one page it also provides a link to each page on the main report.

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Browser for results

If you wish to use a specific browser then enter the path to the executable or use the browse button to select it.

If you leave this blank, or use an executable that cannot be found, then the results will be displayed using your default browser (default_browser.sh will be executed for Linux).

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Browser identification

When validating a website the tool identifies itself as 'TotalValidator/6.0' by default. If you wish the tool to identify itself as another user agent, then select the required identity from the drop down list.

You can amend the list of identities and what they mean using the 'Edit List' button. This will display a dialog box for easy editing of the list of user agents and the corresponding text sent to the web server when the tool accesses it.

If you wish to return to the default list of identities then use the 'Reset' button provided on the edit screen.

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Last results button

This will open a window in your default browser to display the results of the last successful validation.

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Reset tab button

The Reset Tab button on each tab resets all the options on that particular tab to their defaults. If you wish to reset all of the options then use the Reset All button at the bottom instead.

Note that a confirmation dialog will appear just in case you press this button by mistake

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Bottom buttons

Once you have selected your web page and options use the Validate button to start the validation process. At the end of the process your default browser should be launched displaying the results of the validation.

During the validation process you can use the Cancel button to stop the process. Note that this may take a while to respond when validating broken links.

The Reset All button resets all the options on all the tabs to their defaults. If you wish to reset just the options on an individual tab then use the Reset Tab button on that tab. Note that a confirmation dialog will appear just in case you press the Reset button by mistake

There is also a Save button to save the current settings, and Exit to exit the tool.

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