XHTML Validation

An XHTML document is validated against a Document Type Definition.

Validate XHTML with a DTD

An XHTML document is validated against a Document Type Definition (DTD). Before an XHTML file can be properly validated, a correct DTD must be added as the first line of the file.

The Strict DTD includes elements and attributes that have not been deprecated or do not appear in framesets:

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"

The Transitional DTD includes everything in the strict DTD plus deprecated elements and attributes:

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"

The Frameset DTD includes everything in the transitional DTD plus frames as well:

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd"

This is a simple XHTML document:

<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>simple document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>a simple paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>

Test your XHTML with the W3C Validator

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