Total Validator

Total Validator v5.2 released

2008-04-15T18:44:00.002+01:00

Version 5.2 is all about even more browsers to screenshot your pages with, now up to 32 browsers in total across Windows, Linux and OS/X.

New for this release on Windows is Safari 3.1. On OS/X Firefox 3, Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2.0 are now available. And for Linux Firefox 1.5, Firefox 1.0 and Mozilla 1.7 make a welcome return.

Also in this release the reports have been improved to make it clearer when pages pass. Also the 'Show on success' option is now available for all the tools and the online service, and has also been extended to allow the page layout to be viewed even when there are no problems found. This is particularly useful when validating pages that redirect so you can be sure that the right page has been validated.

Total Validator v5.1 released

2008-03-21T19:52:00.001Z

This new release sees the addition of German spellchecking to all tools and the online site.

Firefox 3 screenshots are now available for both Windows and Linux, and Opera 9 screenshots for Linux has finally made a return. However, Firefox 1.0, Firefox 1.5 and Mozilla 1.7 screenshots on Linux have all been deprecated.

In addition the Firefox Extension is now available in 6 new locales (Japanese, Polish, French, Italian, Brazillian, and Spanish), and the Desktop Tools can all now open files with any extension.

Total Validator v5.0 released

2008-01-30T08:17:00.000Z

Version 5.0 was released earlier this week. This major release sees the launch of the Advanced Desktop Tool allowing all users to validate more than one page locally. This is intended to replace the Pro Desktop Tool, which will continue to be supported for the time being.

With this release the basic parsing and html validation engines have been reworked, providing many more validation tests than ever before, and preparing the way for HTML5 support later this year. The accessibility validation engine has also been heavily refactored ready to support WCAG2 validation later this year.

In addition the Tools and Firefox extension have many UI changes intended to improve ease of use.

Firefox Extension 4.5 Released

2007-12-04T20:01:00.000Z

This lastest release of the extension provides integration with the Total Validator Basic desktop tool.

So now if you have the Basic tool installed then with just one click you can validate pages on your local disk, or intranet/firewalled pages inaccessible to the online validation service.

Using the desktop tool rather than the online service may mean faster validation times, and gives you the ability to validate pages when you're not connected to the Internet.

Total Validator v4.4.0 released

2007-10-10T20:24:00.000+01:00

The Validator Engine, Desktop Tool and Firefox Extension have all been updated to v4.4.0.

The emphasis with this release is on better checking of http headers and their associated meta tags. In particular: content-type, content-script-type and content-style-type.

There are also two new options to allow query parameters and jsessionid's to be removed from links before testing or following. These will help to prevent loops when testing sites that dynamically create links.

Total Validator v4.3.0 released

2007-09-15T15:23:00.001+01:00

The Validator Engine, Desktop Tool and Firefox Extension have all been updated to v4.3.0.

This is a small release consisting mostly of bug fixes together with improvements to the validation of character references whereever they are used.

The main functional change is the support for regular expressions when entering paths to skip making it easier than ever to target your validation.

Total Validator v4.2.0 released

2007-08-05T10:59:00.001+01:00

The Validator Engine, Desktop Tool and Firefox Extension have all been updated to v4.2.0.

Across all tools screenshots for Camino for OS/X are now available, bringing the number of browsers available to 25.

In the Firefox extension you can now select multiple browsers for taking screenshots with the Pro Tool. You can also launch the Pro Tool UI passing across all the values in the extension including browser cookies.

The underlying engine also has a number of improvements: The number of redirects has been increased to seven and the referer header is now set when traversing a site. A number of stability enhancements have also been added to the screenshot system and performance improvements all round.

Validator Engine, Tool, and Extension v4.1 released

2007-07-01T10:36:00.001+01:00

In all forms of Total Validator you can now specify the suffix of validation email attachments to avoid mail server issues.

In the Tool new options include preventing the default browser launching and displaying the last results at any time.

In the Validation engine broken link checking and cookie handling has been updated to make it more forgiving in the face of suspect servers. There's also support for spell checking words that have styled first letters.

The Firefox extension provides support for all the new features and the Options dialog has been compacted to save screen space.

Validator Engine, Tool, and Extension v4.0 released

2007-05-15T21:15:00.001+01:00

After a long wait a new version of the Total Validator suite has been released.

But it should be worth it. As well as internal refactoring to make things better than ever, there are many changes all round such as improved performance, revamped branding, new validation logos, updated tests, and error breakdowns on reports.

In addition the desktop tool is now optimised for Vista, and you can specify where the results are output to make it easier to keep your results for future use. Also you can now check more than one site or disconnected parts of the same site in one go.

But due to increased demand Mac OS/X screenshots are now only available when you purchase the Pro Desktop Tool.

Desktop Tool 3.4 Released

2007-02-24T07:57:00.000Z

This is a fairly minor release as far as changes to the tool is concerned. However, there are several big changes to the validation engine within it.

The most obvious changes are to the validation report. Where possible this now highlights the problem in red as well as providing the usual descriptive text. The summaries now break down Accessibility problems into the different parts (A, AA, 508 etc). There is also a new short report format available via the Options menu. This provides a report that only displays the lines with problems on for people familiar to the W3C way of doing things. Personally, I think it makes it more difficult to locate and understand problems, but it's now there if you prefer it. Finally, the report displays 'implicit' tags (ie tags that TV adds) if there are problems associated with them.

The other big change is an expansion of the type checking that is done. Almost every type of attribute is now checked to ensure that it contains the 'right' type of value as defined in the standards.

In addition there are many other changes such as more accurate and robust broken link timeouts, additional HTTP headers sent to the Web Server, and better support for Vista.

Firefox Extension 3.5 and Desktop Tool 3.3 Released

2007-01-17T12:40:00.000Z

The main feature of these synchronized releases is support for cookies when validating sites.

The free desktop tool will accept and send first party and session cookies whilst validating a site. The pro tool expands on this with the option to cache cookies between validation sessions and options on what type of cookies to store and send from the cache. In addition the extension can send all cookies for the current site to the pro tool.

Thus you can now use Firefox to login to a site that uses login sessions stored in cookies and then validate the rest of the site using the pro tool.

Also both tools now support the saving of misspelt words during spell checks. This allows you to easy and quickly build up your own dictionary of site-specific additional words, making spell checking easier than before.

IE4.01 and IE5.01 Screenshots now supported

2006-12-11T10:28:00.000Z

Due to popular demand, with the latest release of the validation engine (3.7.0) two older versions of Internet Explorer are now available for screenshots.

Pro desktop tool v3.2 and Firefox Extension v3.4 have also been released to support the new browsers.

In addition the Pro desktop tool now supports multiple browser screenshots.

Firefox Extension 3.3 Released

2006-11-16T11:09:00.000Z

With this release you can now validate individual frames in a frameset via the Context Menu. For example on right mouse click on a page containing frames and you will see that the TV option now has a sub-menu with options to validate the entire page, or just the frame you clicked in.

There is also a new authentication option for Pro tool users to mimic what is available in the Pro tool itself.

Finally, you no longer lose your Pro Tool Path settings when 'Defaults' is clicked. If you really wish to go back to the default, manually blank out this field just before clicking the 'Defaults' button.

Desktop Tool 3.1 Released

2006-11-04T11:04:00.000Z

New features include a built-in user agent editor, and support for the best-fit html validation option released to the online service last month.

In addition the Pro tool also supports IE7 and FF2 screenshots and OS/X and Linux versions of the Pro tool are now available.

IE7 and Firefox 2.0 Screenshots now supported

2006-10-22T16:07:00.000+01:00

The online validation service now supports IE7 and FF2 screenshots on Windows. This brings the total to 24 browsers across 3 platforms (Windows, OS/X, Linux) now available for screen shots.

Support for IE7 and FF2 will be added to the Firefox extension and desktop tool by the end of this month.

Validator Engine 3.6.0 Released

2006-10-17T20:35:00.000+01:00

Haven't a clue what HTML standard your pages conform to (2.0, 3.2, 4.01, XHTML ...)?

Total Validator 3.6 now provides a best-fit option which works out which HTML standard will produce the least errors when tested against.

The auto-detect option now falls-back to best-fit mode if no tag is found (W3C simply guesses that it's 4.01 even if your document is XHTML!).

In addition the validation report has been updated to give you a break down of each type of problem (HTML, Accessibility etc) with totals for each area and for each problem together with additional navigation to get you quickly to what you need to see.

Other improvements include Byte Order Mark (BOM) detection, and shorter timeouts when checking links, for faster validation.

Validator 3.5, Firefox extension 3.0 and Desktop Tool 3.0

2006-09-30T17:51:00.000+01:00

Major new releases of the Total Validator and associated tools came out today providing full integration between all products for the first time.

The online service now supports the taking of screenshots across different platforms in parallel for a faster response and less contention. It also supports the new features in the Firefox extension and Desktop Tool.

The latest Desktop Tool can now send requests for screenshots to the online service, including Mac screenshots. In turn the Firefox extension can now use the Desktop Tool to validate pages in place of the online service, providing the complete range of validation options of the tool from the extension.

In summary with just one click from your browser you can now validate an entire website and take screenshots of the home page in (for example) Opera9 on (for example) Apple Mac OS/X.

Mac screenshots available with latest release

2006-09-17T17:40:00.000+01:00

Total Validator was upgraded today to provide screenshots of four popular Mac browsers: Safari, Firefox, Mozilla and Opera.

The new version (v3.4.0) also adds the facility to take screenshots at 1280x1024 in addition to the existing 1024x768, 800x600, and 640x480 resolutions.

These facilities are expected to be integrated into the next major release of the Firefox extension, which will also provide support for launching the full desktop tool. The desktop tool itself is also in the process of being upgraded, with the next major release expected to provide a screenshot option of its own.

Firefox Extension 2.3 Released

2006-09-11T08:41:00.000+01:00

The latest release of the popular Total Validator Firefox extension was released today.

This new version provides support for validating local files and files behind firewalls, so you are no longer restricted to validating pages accessible from the online service.

You can also now access the options dialog from the extensions menu and even run the validator directly from the options dialog.

Desktop Tool 2.1 Released

2006-07-08T12:04:00.000+01:00

The latest version of the desktop version of Total Validator was released today.

The main highlights of this release include:

o Much faster checking of web sites due to parallel broken link checking and optimized link checks.

o Sites using self-generated or expired SSL certificates can also now be validated.

o The full tool can now skip parts of the website being tested e.g. links to forum areas.

o The full tool also has additional proxy server settings.

Validator 3.3.1 and Extension 2.2 Released

2006-06-23T09:56:00.000+01:00

Minor releases of validator engine and Firefox extension to support Opera v9 screen shots. As a result Opera v6 screenshot support has now been removed.

The engine update also adds validation of the content-type in meta tags and in HTTP headers to ensure that it is allowed for the document being validated (ie HTML or XHTML).

Validator Engine 3.3.0 Released

2006-06-18T14:10:00.000+01:00

This latest release of Total Validator incorporates a 'skip path' option.

The 'skip path' option allows you to enter a path to ignore when checking multiple pages. This path is appended to the path of the starting page and matched against each page that is checked. This simple pattern matching allows you to skip more than one part of your website depending on how you have named your folders.

Desktop Tool v2.0.0 Released

2006-05-21T09:42:00.000+01:00

The latest version of the Total Validator Desktop Tool was released today.

This version incorporates the latest validator engine (v3.2.1) utilising an enhanced HTTP engine including more robust handling of GET requests, and support for BASIC/DIGEST/SOCKS/NTLM when authenticating to a web or proxy server using the full tool.

Authentication details may be entered on an new tab on the full tool, or the user prompted via a pop-up dialog box, or both. A new menu option also allows Windows proxy settings to be used where required on both the free and full tools.

The user interface has been tweaked a little for easier use and the tool now remembers the last 10 starting pages using a drop down list, and also saves the position and size of the window between invocations

This version also includes many spellcheck enhancements, providing more matches than ever before and a better suggestions engine. The 'lang' and 'xml:lang' attributes are now used to decide when to perform a spell check, with an option for the full tool of ignoring these if required.

Validator 3.2.0 and Extension 2.1 Released

2006-05-12T21:28:00.000+01:00

Minor releases of validator engine and Firefox extension to support new spell check feature that skips the spell check if the html lang or xml:lang attributes are not compatible with the chosen language.

A new spellcheck option allows the old behaviour to be used if required.

Firefox extension 2.0 released

2006-05-07T12:43:00.000+01:00

This latest version of the Firefox extension for Total Validator has been completely refactored.

New options for screen shots allow a choice of screen resolution and the delay before a screen shot is taken.

You can now run the validation offline by providing an email address to send the results to. Also you can now control the visibility of the status bar icon and context menu items.