TopStyle Tutorial 11

Validating the Style Sheet

Now you will validate the style sheet to insure that there are no errors and that it will perform properly in the browsers that you expect to be used to view the page. To run TopStyle's built-in style checker, click the toolbutton to the shown to the left on the Tools Toolbar (or choose Tools-->Style Checker from the Menus).

The results of the validation will appear in the Results window that opens beneath the editor window. Scroll down the list, and you will see that:

• Warnings appear at the top of the list, preceded by this icon:
• Hints also appear at the top of the list, preceded by this icon:
• Errors are grouped by style definition
• Errors are preceded by this icon:
• Clicking on any message will take you to problematic code in the style sheet.

Note that you will see some hints and warnings, as well as errors under both the Netscape 4 and IE 3 definitions. What you do about these messages will vary. Remember that CSS errors will not produce error messages for users; the style properties simply will not be used by browsers that do not support them. There are cases, however, when an unsupported property or value may result in a page that is not readable. The best solution usually is to test pages in all browsers you think your users might have to insure that the rendered pages are usable.

In this case, you will correct one potential problem: click on the hint that DarkBlue is not one of the 16 standard color names to locate that property in the style sheet. Change the color name from DarkBlue to Navy. Run the Style Checker again to verify that the hint disappears.