[WSG] LOCAL XHTML TESTING - HOW TO DO IT?

[Charles Slack]

LOCAL XHTML TESTING - HOW TO DO IT? Hi, I'm an experienced real time software engineer getting involved in Web design. I have done a lot of reading, both books and web pages and, after a lot of heart searching, have arrived at the following strategy for developing web pages:   1. Develop and test the site initially using an XHTML 1.0 strict DOCTYPE until I have the site working to my satisfaction. This will be done locally on my PC (I will not upload the site). I hope that this will set me on the right road to producing well formed XHTML code which will be ready when more browsers (IE) support XHTML. I intend to follow the W3C compatibility rules (Annex C) to make sure that my XHTML is backwards compatible with HTML.   2. I realise that there are difficulties presenting XHTML to some browsers (IE in particular) and that I will end up with the browser treating my code as HTML in "quirks" mode. For that reason I intend to change to HTML 4.01 strict DOCTYPE before going live and carrying out validation and final testing.   That's the background. The question is what is the best way of testing and validating my XHTML code locally? I am not very clear how browsers, validators/linters, Tidy etc manage doctypes when looking at code. How can I be sure that they are treating the code as XHTML 1.0 strict and not HTML?   Can anyone point me at any interesting sites or offer any suggestions?   Thanks,   Charlie