Total Validator extension for FF

[Paul Jr]

Anyone seen (or used) the Total Validator extension for FF? My interest was piqued when I read the second paragraph:
Provides true HTML validation (HTML 2.0 to XHTML 1.1) using the official DTDs. So you no longer have to put up with mistakes in the W3C validator (it doesn't validate attributes) and tools such as HTML Tidy which interpret the standards incorrectly (it doesn't use the official DTDs).
What is this nonsense about W3C validator mistakes? I've never heard of such things. I was under the impression that when it comes to validating markup, the W3C validator is king.

Discuss.

[MstrBob]

No, nothing is perfect. The W3C validator does have some problems, yes specifically with attributes. However, I've yet to see a better validator, and I would be skeptical of some new one until it had been tested rather exhaustedly. Try throwing out some complicated pages, bunch of lesser-used XML and XHTML features at it and see how well it does compared to W3C's validator.

It honestly shouldn't be that hard to implement a decent validator. After all, every XML browser should be validating XML files as it interprets them. Still no handy tool though (nor a complete implementation).

[David Harrison]

Well I do know that the W3C validator will ignore a custom DTD, so you can't specify your own elements and attributes and expect them to be found valid, though I know there are other validators that don't have this shortcoming.

[Paul Jr]

The W3C validator does have some problems, yes specifically with attributes.
Hmm, interesting. So what specifically does it do or not do?