That's right - I never thought that I'd have completely validated anything when I woke up today, but believe it or not, the homepage now validates as strict XHTML.

 

As I've been mentioning basically since day one, standards compliance is the biggest task to accomplish before I feel confident in releasing Theia as a stable version (which is estimated for July 12th, 2010 by the way).

 

Well, it's definitely getting there. When I first started taking validating Theia seriously there were over 1500 errors with just as many (or more) warnings. That's to be expected though, considering this is a project I've been developing for nearly a decade. In the past months I've been working at tidying things up, and when I started working today there were some 250 errors. The home page currently validates with no errors and no warnings, but this by no means things are altogether.

 

It should be emphasized, first and foremost, that this is JUST for the home page - I can't vouch for other pages yet. Plus, it is important to take into consideration that I don't have all that many features enabled here. If I had thrown in as many modules to the left (like in the demo), it probably would not check out. There are also several home page features I don't use now, so this is all just a small step, but a milestone nonetheless.

 

Though I'm probably the last person on this planet you could call a fan of the W3 (don't get me started  on what I think of the lousy job they do), I at least have enough sense to realize that despite what I may think, the majority of webmasters out there have been deeply indoctrinated by the W3 that it's necessary to conform in this sense. So while I assure you that Theia will be completely standards compliant come the big release day of 1.0.0 stable - don't go expecting me to boast standards compliance with any stupid "I love validator" buttons. I'm not that much of a tool that I'll kiss the rump of a bunch of corporate-run folks, masquerading as "by the people", who have held web technology back for far too long. [/rant]