Firefox extension options
To access and set the available options for the extension right mouse click either the 'TV' icon on the status bar or the 'TV' toolbar button, select 'Total Validator Options' from the Firefox Tools menu, or 'Options' from the Firefox extensions dialog.
To reset all the options back to their defaults use the 'Defaults' button at the bottom of the dialog box.
Note: If you select the View --> Toolbars menu option and choose 'Customize...' you can add a 'TV' button to your toolbar as an alternative way of running Total Validator.
topValidations tab
Use this tab to select which of the five validations you wish to perform each time you validate a page. If you don't select any option then a simple validation will still be performed to ensure that there are no broken tags etc.
If you untick any option such as 'Html validation' then the corresponding tab containing options for that type of validation will be hidden and the options on it will be completely ignored.
Use Pro desktop tool: If you have the Pro tool installed then this will be used to validate your pages. You will also be able to use the options on the Pro tool tab and the Apple Mac options on the Screenshot tab. Untick this checkbox to use the restricted options of the online service instead. If you don't have the Pro tool installed then setting this option will have no effect.
Use Basic desktop tool: If you have the Basic tool installed then this will be used to validate your pages. The advantage of this is that you will be able to validate pages on your local drive or intranet. But you will not be able to take screenshots or make use of the extra options on the Broken links tab. If you don't have the Basic tool installed then setting this option will have no effect. Note that there is no Basic tool for Linux.
Always upload page: Unless you are using one of the desktop tools, the url of the current page is sent to the online validation service for testing. But if the url is inaccessible from the internet (e.g. behind a firewall) then this will fail. Tick this checkbox to upload the content of the current web page for validation just as is done with local pages. This checkbox may also be used by users of the Pro desktop tool when taking snapshots of inaccessible pages. Note: Broken links cannot be checked with uploaded files. Alternatively install a desktop tool and use that to check broken links in firewalled/local pages. Also with this option snapshots of pages will not contain any images referenced by those pages.
Report warnings: Tick this checkbox to show warning messages as well as errors on the output report.
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.
Short report: Tick this checkbox to generate a short report displaying only those lines with problems on, similar to other popular validators.
Email address: If you enter a valid email address here then when you validate a page it will be done in the background and an email sent to you containing the results. This is particularly useful when checking large pages or taking screen shots. If you don't receive an email then check your address and that your mail server will accept zip files (see below). Note that your email address will not be collected or passed onto any commercial organisation - I hate spam as much as the next person. However, if you're worried get a temporary email address from someone like Yahoo. Note: With the Pro desktop tool this option is only used to return screenshots.
Attachment suffix: If your mail server does not allow .zip file attachments you can attempt to circumvent this by having the attachment's suffix renamed to whatever you wish (e.g. .piz). When the email arrives, rename the attachment back to *.zip to retrieve the results.
HTML tab
You can use this tab to select which (X)HTML validation you wish to perform. Pages can be validated against one of the W3C Markup Specifications or the ISO/IEC definition.
Total Validator includes an SGML parser and test the page against the latest version of the W3C/ISO DTD (i.e. the specification) that you choose. It will also test against some of the things in the specifications which cannot be covered by the DTDs, although this is a work in progress at present.
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.
Accessibility tab
Use this tab to select which accessibility guidelines you wish to validate against. You can choose from one of the three levels of the W3C WAI Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 or US Section 508.
Note that many of the guidelines, and especially the WAI Priority 3 ones, can only properly be tested through manual checking. That is why accessibility validators typically display lots of 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. So assuming that you've manually made your pages accessible in the first place Total Validator should help give a quick check if you've made any changes since.
Broken links tab
If you choose to validate broken links Total Validator will check each link on each page 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 web pages.
Report redirects: When checking for broken links redirects are automatically followed. But redirected links can eventually become obsolete, so you may wish to know when this happens. Ticking this s checkbox will display a warning message for these three types of redirect: Permanently Moved (301), Temporarily Moved (302), and See Other (303).
Timeout: Checking links can often be a time consuming process, especially if there are broken links on the page or when accessing particularly slow servers. So you may wish to set the value here to change how long to wait for a response before reporting a link as broken.
Spell check tab
The spelling validator will check your pages for spelling mistakes. It will take a little longer to check your page with this option so you may wish to provide an email address on the Validations tab to avoid hanging around. It is also advisable to only use this option once your web page is valid as the output can be quite verbose.
Languages: You can choose to check against 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. Each dictionaryis updated regularly, but they do not contain many proper nouns or industry specific words (e.g. cities, people's names, company names, technical terms). However, you can provide your own additional words using the advanced version of the online validator or the Pro desktop tool.
With the Pro tool there's an additional option to allow you to use your own dictionary instead of one of the standard ones supplied.
Options: By default certain types of words are not checked. This includes words that are all upper case (e.g. NASA), words that are mixed case (e.g. SpellCheck), and words that contain digits (e.g. Homer6). Tick the appropriate checkbox to include these words. You can also choose to check words within the following displayable attributes: alt, title, summary, label, prompt, and standby. You may also suppress the list of suggestions that appears when a word is not found in the dictionary.
Special 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. For reference:
- American or British spell check runs when web page language set to 'en' or 'eng'
- French spell check runs when web page language set to 'fr', 'fre', or 'fra'
- Italian spell check runs when web page language set to 'it' or 'ita'
- Spanish spell check runs when web page language set to 'es', 'esl', or 'spa'
- German spell check runs when web page language set to 'de', 'deu', or 'ger'
Screenshot tab
You can use screen shots of what your web page looks like in a particular browser for cross browser compatibility validation. Note that this process can only run for one user at a time, and so can often be slow. You may wish to provide an email address on the Validations tab to avoid hanging around.
In order to prevent possible abuse the browsers do not have permanent cookies turned on, nor do they have (m)any plugins activated. Also because it is a static picture, animations, movies etc. are normally turned off.
Windows/Linux/Apple Mac: Select the browser/OS combination you wish to view your page with. Where possible the various toolbars and status bars of the browser will be turned off to provide maximum screen coverage for your page. If your web page is larger than will fit in the browser window, the page will be scrolled down and multiple screenshots returned (max 5). Note: The Apple Mac options will only work if you have the Pro desktop tool installed and with the Pro tool you can select up to six browsers at a time.
Resolution: By default the screenshot will be taken at a resolution of 1024x768 with the browser displayed in a full screen window. But you can use this option to have images taken at 1280x1024, 800x600 or 640x480 instead.
Delay: In order to ensure that your page is fully loaded before a screen shot is taken Total Validator pauses once the browser has been launched. If your page has few graphics and objects you may wish to reduce the delay down to 3 seconds. Alternatively, if the screen shots taken are partially loaded you may wish to increase the delay.
Pro tool tab
This tab contains the additional options available with the Pro desktop tool and so are only of use if you have this installed. The options reflect those on the Advanced and Authentication tabs of the Pro tool including the ability to specify how many pages to check (leave blank for unlimited).
Cookies: The 'Send browser cookies to pro tool' checkbox allows you to validate websites that are protected by a login form, by sending all the cookies for the current page (stored in the browser's cache) to the Pro tool. This works as follows: In Firefox log into the site you wish to check. Your browser should now hold a session cookie containing a reference to your login session. When you now use the extension to check the current page this session cookie will be passed to the Pro tool so that it will have access to the protected pages of the website. Note that login sessions normally have an expiry time associated with them so don't wait long before validating the site.
Path to tool: This normally displays the location of your Pro tool. A blank field usually indicates that the Pro tool could not be found. For Windows the path is taken from the Registry and should not normally need to be amended, and is typically "C:\Program Files\TotalValidatorTool". For OS/X again you shouldn't need to amend the path, which defaults to "/Applications". However, with Linux the tool can be installed anywhere and so you must manually enter the name of the directory containing the "totalvalidatorpro" directory into the Path field. For example "/home/halford".
Run tool: Click this button to launch the Pro Tool UI. All your extension settings will be copied across to the Pro tool replacing any settings you may have saved the last time you ran the tool. If you have the appropriate checkbox ticked then any cookies stored in the browser for the current page will also be copied across and kept in memory ready to be used when you validate that page.
Advanced tool tab
This tab contains the additional options available with the Advanced desktop tool and so are only of use if you have this installed. The options reflect those on the Advanced tab of the Advanced tool including the ability to specify how many pages to check (leave blank for unlimited).
Path to tool: This normally displays the location of your Advanced tool. A blank field usually indicates that the Advanced tool could not be found. For Windows the path is taken from the Registry and should not normally need to be amended, and is typically "C:\Program Files\TotalValidatorTool". For OS/X again you shouldn't need to amend the path, which defaults to "/Applications".
Run tool: Click this button to launch the Advanced Tool UI. All your extension settings will be copied across to the Advanced tool replacing any settings you may have saved the last time you ran the tool. If you have the appropriate checkbox ticked then any cookies stored in the browser for the current page will also be copied across and kept in memory ready to be used when you validate that page.
Basic tool tab
This tab contains the path to the Basic desktop tool and so is only of use if you have this installed.
Path to tool: This normally displays the location of the Basic tool. A blank field usually indicates that the Basic tool could not be found. For Windows the path is taken from the Registry and should not normally need to be amended, and is typically "C:\Program Files\TotalValidatorTool". For OS/X again you shouldn't need to amend the path, which defaults to "/Applications".
Run tool: Click this button to launch the Basic Tool UI. All your extension settings will be copied across to the Basic tool replacing any settings you may have saved the last time you ran the tool.
Help tab
This tab displays the current version and some useful links, such as to this page. It also allows you to set the visibility of the status bar icon and context menu items.
Show status bar icon: Untick this checkbox if you don't wish to have the 'TV' icon appear on the status bar.
Show context menu icon: Untick this checkbox if you don't wish to have 'Total Validator' appear on the context menu (rt mouse click menu).