title: validation using jquery
body: <p>i'm trying to validate an html page using jquery, but nothing happens. it's a simple page, yet the textboxes aren't validated. </p>
  
  <p>this is the code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /&gt; 
  &lt;script type="text/javascript" src="~/jquery.js/"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  &lt;script type="text/javascript" src="~/jquery-validate/jquery.validate.js/"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
    $(document).ready(function(){
      var validator = $("#submitForm").validate({
              debug: true,
              rules: {
                  author: "required",
                  quote: "required"
              },
              messages: {
                  author: "Name of Author required"
                  quote: "Please enter Quote"
              },
              errorPlacement: function(error, element) {
                  error.appendTo( element.parent().top() );
              }
        );
    });
    &lt;/script&gt;
  
  &lt;body&gt;
  
  &lt;div class="container"&gt;
  &lt;div class="center_div"&gt;
  &lt;h2&gt;Submit Your Quote&lt;/h2&gt;
  &lt;fieldset&gt;
  &lt;form id="submitForm" action="qinsert.php" method="post"&gt;
  &lt;div class="error" style="display:none"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;div class="field"&gt;
  &lt;label&gt;Author: &lt;/label&gt;
  &lt;input name="author" type="text" class="required" minLength=3&gt;
  &lt;span class="error"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;div class="field"&gt;
  &lt;label&gt;Quote: &lt;/label&gt;
  &lt;textarea name="quote" cols=22 class="required" minLength=5&gt;&lt;/textarea&gt;
  &lt;span class="error"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  &lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;input id="button1" type="submit" value="Submit" class="submit" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;input id="button2" type="reset" value="Reset" /&gt; 
  &lt;/form&gt;
  &lt;/fieldset&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>what is wrong with the code? thank you!</p>