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   <a href="./"><span>CSS Validation Service</span></a></h1>
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     Check Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and (X)HTML documents with style sheets
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<h2>CSS Validator User's Manual</h2>

<h3 id="TableOfContents">Table of Contents</h3>

<div id="toc">
<ul>
  <li><a href="#use">How to use the CSS Validator</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="#url">Validation by URL
      response</a></li>
      <li><a href="#fileupload">Validation by file upload</a></li>
      <li><a href="#directinput">Validation by direct input</a></li>
      <li><a href="#basicvalidation">What does the basic validation do?</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#advanced">Advanced validation</a>
    <ul>
	<li><a href="#paramwarnings">Warnings parameter</a></li>
	<li><a href="#paramprofile">Profile parameter</a></li>
	<li><a href="#parammedium">Medium parameter</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#expert">For the experts</a>
    <ul>
	<li><a href="#requestformat">Validation Request Format</a></li>
	<li><a href="#api">CSS Validator Web Service API</a></li>
    </ul>
   </li>
</ul>
</div>

<p id="skip"></p>

<h3 id="use">How to use the CSS Validator</h3>

<p>
The simplest way to check a document is to use the basic interface. In this page
 you will find three forms corresponding to three possibilities:
</p>

<h4 id="url">Validation by URL</h4>
<p>
    Simply enter the URL of the document you want to validate. 
    This document can be HTML or CSS one.
</p>
<img style="display: block; margin-left:auto; margin-right: auto;" 
    src="./images/uri_basic.png" alt="Validation by URI form" />

<h4 id="fileupload">Validation by file upload</h4>    
<p>
    This solution allows you to upload and check a local file. Click the 
    "Browse..." button and select the file you want to check.
</p>
<img style="display: block; margin-left:auto; margin-right: auto;" 
    src="./images/file_upload_basic.png" 
    alt="Validation by File Upload" />
<p>
    In this case, only CSS documents are allowed. It means that you 
    cannot upload (X)HTML documents. You also must be careful with 
    @import rules since they will be followed only if they explicitely 
    reference a public URL (so, forget relative paths with this solution)
</p>
   
<h4 id="directinput">Validation by direct input</h4>
<p>
    This method is perfect for testing CSS fragments. You just have to
    write your CSS in the textarea
</p>
<img style="display: block; margin-left:auto; margin-right: auto;" 
    src="./images/direct_input_basic.png" 
    alt="Validation by direct input" />
<p>
    The same comments as before apply. Note that this solution is 
    very convenient if you have a problem and need some help from the community. 
    It's also very useful to report a bug, since you can link to the resulting 
    URL to give a test case.
</p>    

<h4 id="basicvalidation">What does the basic validation do?</h4>

<p>    
    When using the basic interface, the validator will check the compliance 
    against <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21">CSS 2.1</a>, which is the current 
    CSS technical recommendation.<br />
    It will produce an XHTML output without any warning (you will only see 
    errors).<br />
    The medium is set to "all", which is the medium suitable for all devices 
    (see <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html">
    http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html</a> for a complete description of 
    media).
</p>

<h3 id="advanced">Advanced validation</h3>

<p>
    If you need a more specific check, you can use the advanced interface which 
    allows to specify three parameters. Here is a little help on each of these 
    parameters.
</p>

<h4 id="paramwarnings">Warnings</h4>

<p>
    This parameter is useful to tune the verbosity of the CSS Validator. Indeed,
    The validator can give you two types of messages: errors and warnings.
    Errors are given when the checked CSS does not respect the CSS 
    recommendation. Warnings are different from errors since they do not state a
    problem regarding the specification. They are here to warn (!) the CSS 
    developper that some points might be dangerous and could lead to a strange
    behaviour on some user agents.
</p>
<p>
    A typical warning concerns font-family: if you do not provide a generic font,
    you will get a warning saying that you should add one at the end of the rule,
    otherwise a user agent that doesn't know any of the other fonts will switch 
    to it's default one, which may result in strange display.
</p>

<h4 id="paramprofile">Profile</h4>

<p>
    The CSS validator can check different CSS profiles. A profile lists all the 
    features that an implementation on a particular platform is expected to 
    implement. This definition is taken from 
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/Style/2004/css-charter-long.html#modules-and-profiles0">
	the CSS site
    </a>. The default choice corresponds to the current most used one: 
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2">CSS 2</a>.
</p>

<h4 id="parammedium">Medium</h4>

<p>
    The medium parameter is the equivalent of the @media rule, applying to all 
    the document. You will find more information about media at 
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html">
	http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html
    </a>.
</p>

<h3 id="expert">Experts Only</h3>

<h4 id="requestformat">Validation Request Format</h4>
<p>Below is a table of the parameters you can use to send a query to the W3C
CSS Validator.</p>

<p>If you want to use W3C's public validation server, use the parameters
below in conjunction with the following base URI:<br />
<kbd>http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator</kbd><br />
replace with the address of your own server if you want to call a private
instance of the validator.</p>

<p><strong>Note</strong>: If you wish to call the validator programmatically
for a batch of documents, please make sure that your script will
<code>sleep</code> for <strong>at least 1 second</strong> between requests.
The CSS Validation service is a free, public service for all, your respect is
appreciated. thanks.</p>

<table class="refdoc">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th>Parameter</th>
      <th>Description</th>
      <th>Default value</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>uri</th>
      <td>The <acronym title="Universal Resource Locator">URL</acronym> of
        the document to validate. CSS and HTML documents are allowed.</td>
      <td>None, but either this parameter, or <code>text</code> must be
      given.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>text</th>
      <td>The document to validate, only CSS is allowed.</td>
      <td>None, but either this parameter, or <code>uri</code> must be
      given.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>usermedium</th>
      <td>The <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html">medium</a> used 
	  for the validation, like <code>screen</code>,
	  <code>print</code>, <code>braille</code>...</td>
      <td><code>all</code></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>output</th>
      <td>Triggers the various outputs formats of the validator. Possible 
	formats are 
	<code>text/html</code> and <code>html</code> (XHTML document, 
	Content-Type: text/html), 
	<code>application/xhtml+xml</code> and <code>xhtml</code> (XHTML 
	document, Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml), 
	<code>application/soap+xml</code> and <code>soap12</code> (SOAP 1.2 
	document, Content-Type: application/soap+xml), 
	<code>text/plain</code> and <code>text</code> (text document, 
	Content-Type: text/plain),
	everything else (XHTML document, Content-Type: text/html)	
      </td>
      <td>html</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>profile</th>
      <td>The CSS profile used for the validation. It can be
        <code>css1</code>, <code>css2</code>, <code>css21</code>,
        <code>css3</code>, <code>svg</code>, <code>svgbasic</code>,
        <code>svgtiny</code>, <code>mobile</code>, <code>atsc-tv</code>,
        <code>tv</code> or <code>none</code></td>
      <td>the most recent W3C
        Recommendation: CSS 2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>lang</th>
      <td>The language used for the response, currently, <code>en</code>,
        <code>fr</code>, <code>it</code>, <code>ko</code>, <code>ja</code>, <code>es</code>,
        <code>zh-cn</code>, <code>nl</code>, <code>de</code>, <code>it</code>, 
        <code>pl</code>.</td>
      <td>English (<code>en</code>).</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>warning</th>
      <td>The warning level, <code>no</code> for no warnings, <code>0</code> 
	for less warnings, <code>1</code>or <code>2</code> for more warnings
      </td>
      <td>2</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

<h4 id="api">CSS Validator Web Service API: SOAP 1.2 validation interface documentation</h4>
<p>    
    For more technical help, in particular about the SOAP 1.2 output and all 
    the possible ways to call the validator, see the 
    <a href="./api.html">CSS Validator Web Service API</a>.       
</p>

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