Do You Care if Your Website is W3C Compliant? 624
eldavojohn wonders: " Do W3C standards hold any importance to anyone and if so, why? When you finish a website, do you run it to the validator to laugh and take bets, or do you e-mail the results to the office intern and tell him/her to get to work? Since Opera 9 is the only browser to pass the ACID2 test, is strict compliance really necessary?" We all know that standards are important, but there has always been a distance between what is put forth by the W3C and what we get from our browsers. Microsoft has yet to release a browser that comes close to supporting standards (and it remains to be seen if IE7 will change this). Mozilla, although supportive, is still a ways from ACID2 compliance. Web developers are therefore faced with a difficult decision: do they develop their content to the standards, or to the browsers that will render it? As web developers (or the manager of web developers), what decisions did you made on your projects?
Update: 05/20 by C : rgmisra provides a minor correction to the information provided. It is stated above that Opera9 is the only browser to pass the ACID2 test, however "This is not true - Safari was the first released publicly released browser to pass the ACID2 tests." -- Sorry about the mistake.
Depends on Usage (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, if I'm building a site in my spare time, and it's targetted at Slashdot audience, I would be very careful with all the standards because (1) I can approve my own time and (2) I am more concerned about peers' feedback than ROI.
I guess it's the humanization of the site that makes you care about compliance.
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, for ROI, I'm sorry, but if *ANY* user with a *FREE* web browser (or m
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the end of my devil's advocacy.
Standards-based, accessible websites have a bigger ROI than is necessarily measurable. These sites tend to produce better search engine results, be faster to download, use less bandwidth, and improved usability. And if you have an altruistic bone in your body, such a site improves the overall quality of the web.
So the ROI is definitely there, if you know how to make the case for it.
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, but merely "shooting for compliance" and "actually getting there" can be the same thing as far as most of those roi benefits.
In other words, if compliance is an objective, and you actively endeavour to achieve it, even if you miss the green "your page is 100% valid" result, you usually reap most of the roi benefits you refer to, whether you fix all the "errors" or not.
Its sort of like ISO9000 and other "organizational" status sym
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:3, Insightful)
The key is the unpopular site - small businesses, for instance - that want to compete in search engines but will never have thousands of visitors a day.
Standards-compliant websites do not necessarily make for better SEO. But the practices and culture around them do.
Accessibility generally results in improved SEO simply by 1) increasing the placement of relevant text within a page and 2) making the site more accessible to search engines
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:3, Informative)
I'm working on a redesign of a site that is a perfect example of what happens when you let developers write code that "just works". Our pages are served out of a CMS that is provided by a little company in the Pacific Northwest that you may
I disagree; it does not depend on usage (Score:5, Insightful)
I have developed sites both using tag soup AND strict HTML and XHTML. It takes no longer to do things the standards way, and using standards will almost ALWAYS make maintenance easier and therefore faster. That's ROI.
Finally, I use Firefox's tidy validator [mozilla.org]. It takes no time to validate your code (literally, it gives you a status bar icon indicating success or failure) and I have found that more often that not, checking for validation errors helps you find logical errors in your scripting code (e.g. incorrect criteria with a loop over a recordset).
It pays to use standards. I speak from experience. That doesn't mean that you have to slavishly adhere to them in certain situations. 99% of the time, though, there is no real excuse to ignore them.
Re:I disagree; it does not depend on usage (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry. If you're doing something more complicated than building a 10-page static site, or even something with a little PHP-driven database, then it will take longer. It'll limit your choice of available third-party modules, and you'll have to evaluate each one you consider for its standards compliance. You'll have to hire more competent developers when you outsource. You may
Re:I disagree; it does not depend on usage (Score:3, Interesting)
Hence, we are STILL stuck with table-based layouts as they are often the only thing that can reliably stretch to fit arbitrary content in a pleasent way. Sure divs and CSS1 work well for a lot of content where you know the sizes-of-components/lengths-of-text, but for building generic CMSs in which users can add a
Re:Depends on Usage (Score:4, Interesting)
Safari 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Safari 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Safari 2 (Score:2, Informative)
No, Konqueror's good (Score:2)
Re:Safari 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Safari 2 (Score:2)
But it's not compatible... with the computer.
Re:konqueror also passes (Score:2, Informative)
So, I had to try this out and see it for myself. And, sure enough it rendered correctly. Then I started noticing the problems.
Here is a screenshot [dnsalias.org] after "scrolling" using either the scroll wheel or up/down keys (despite the fact — as you point out — that there are no scroll bars).
And another one [dnsalias.org] after a resize of the window. I restarted konq before doing the resize, so the issues aren't left over from the scrolling.
Also, note in the resized screenshot that the progress bar is stuck at 37%.
Re:konqueror also passes (Score:2)
Re:konqueror also passes (Score:4, Informative)
Changing the size of the window has similar effects. Konqueror is exhibiting correct behavior; the test wasn't designed to keep the face constant after scrolling or forcing the browser to adjust the positioning by resizing the window. It's just supposed to display correctly after you click on the link that jumps you down to the face.
Re:Opera 9 and Safari 2 are both beta (Score:5, Informative)
I should also mention that if you perform a search for Safari on the Apple Support website, you will also get a link to Safari 1.3.2 and Safari 2.0.1 both newer versions than the one you pointed to, which is legacy software.
Because it's a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
When you write a program, your compiler or interperter will tell you when you fuck up. When you write a website, your browser tries its best not to tell you when a page is fucked up.
It's a supremely bad idea to rely on whether a browser can display your site to determine whether it is designed correctly or not. Even the next version of the same browser might do something unpredictably different with your tag soup.
Re:Because it's a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Debugging valid code in semi-compliant browsers is still much better than debugging invalid code in semi-compliant browsers.
If something doesn't look or work properly, the first thing you should do is test whether or not it is your code that is wrong. It gives you more certainty whether or not it is a browser bug you are dealing with, and how to research working around it.
Re:And besides... (Score:5, Informative)
<html><body><script src="..."/>Lots of stuff</body></html>
Your <script> tag never gets closed (remember, this is *not* XML!). Wee, no content....
If you are actually sending it with some sort of XML MIME type, yes, go ahead and do self-closing tags. Just don't pretend it works when you're being HTML.
Re:And besides... (Score:4, Informative)
The problem isn't HTML vs. XHTML and passing self-closing tags as HTML, the problem is that 99.999% of people using XHTML content in their pages, are not sending the proper XHTML Content-type for those pages.
There is ONLY ONE valid Content-type for XHTML content, and that is application/xml+xhtml, not text/html.
Thankfully, MSIE doesn't even support XHTML at all, so we're safe there... for now.
This writeup [hixie.ch] is very clear on the matter.
Re:And besides... (Score:3, Informative)
This is simply not true. RFC 2854 [ietf.org], the definition of text/html, explicitly permits XHTML 1.0 documents that follow Appendix C to be transmitted as text/html.
Doing so causes Mozilla and Opera to parse it as HTML and not XHTML, but that doesn't mean it's "invalid" or non-standard in any way.
Re:And besides... (Score:3, Informative)
That all depends... (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's for work, I'll get it done so it works in IE and Firefox. I'm not getting paid for adhering to the standards, and writing a standards-based site that will look right in freaking IE takes longer than it's worth.
Re:That all depends... (Score:5, Insightful)
I will add to this, however, that I use the W3C validator as a way to help fix bugs. Often if something is not showing up correctly in one particular browser, it can be fixed by addressing one of the errors that the validator picks up. I highly recomend checking all your pages. Even if they don't always pass, the errors will give you insight into how your page is being parsed.
So in response to the original question "do you validate all your pages": I sure do! I check them all, and I fix any of the errors that are easy to fix. I also use it as an invaluable tool to get the page working in many browsers. Ultimately, however, if I have to depart from the W3C spec in order to get something looking right in an important browser, then I leave the errors in.
Re:That all depends... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if there is ever the problem of being not displayed correctly in different browsers: For me starting with W3C compliance and then tweak the stuff to show up correctly in different browsers is more easy than coding for one browser and try do adapt to others. With the W3C compliance you know how the code SHOULD look like, and you can spot the browser dependencies better, thus bug fixing gets more easy.
Re:That all depends... (Score:3, Informative)
First: this is assuming "correctly" is not defined as "pixel perfect", which was not and is not the point of the web. I concede that in many real world situations, the client expects a pixel perfect recreation of a PSD they give you, in which case you may run into problems. Things like the 3 pixel jog [positioniseverything.net] will screw you over. But if by correctly you just mean "looks exactly the same so long as y
Depends. (Score:2)
Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not religious about it, but I try to make it as compliant as possible as I go, run your pages thru the validator a couple of times and you'll pick up your errors quite quickly.
Nowadays, about 60-70% of my pages validates automaticlly on the first try.
Re:Standards (Score:2)
But for sites I am being paid for, it is just too time consuming to be both W3C compliant and work in IE. Thus, unless I am specifically paid to do so, my pages will be tested on the major browsers and if they work perfectly across IE, Moz, Opera, Safari, and so on, damn the standard.
Re:Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, until a new non-compliant standard comes along or the big players have an economic motive to break it. There are no guarantees on the future of technology or future technology markets.
Re:Standards (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Standards (Score:3, Informative)
And seriously, is alt="" that much bloat?
Oh, it's also not the validator's fault, it is part of the HTML 4.01 standard. Argue with the W3C if you don't like it.
I do (Score:3, Insightful)
I care (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the contrapositive is not true, if the W3C validator accepts my page then there is no guarantee I will avoid display problems. But it's a good first step.
A constant argument (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A constant argument (Score:2)
There's more than one reason to be compliant... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people are obsessive about being W3C compliant and do it pretty much just so they can 'show off' the w3c comliant badge. I do it to make sure I didn't make any coding mistakes.
This validation happens to have the nice side effect of making a site render correctly in most decent browsers.
ABSOLUTELY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Overall, I don't think W3C is the end all of web design, however. Even firefox was having a hard time rendering the W3C test page properly. However it does help make sure everything works, and then you can hack the code to fix bugs for broken (ie) browsers. The closer you can be to W3C the better you are over all for long term.
The Java Standard of Web Development... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Oh, Irony... (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, so maybe not so much "ironic", but considering the topic, that is pretty damned funny... or sad, depending on your perspective.
Re:Oh, Irony... (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't hurt (Score:2)
Using the validator checks your syntax while it checks compliance. Once you have error free markup you can decide from there if changing your content to comply with some standard is worth it. For simple things it usually won't make a difference in most browsers. And if some tricky bit of markup that makes your page look just right in IE or whatever your target browser is and it's not compliant
Compliance... to an extent (Score:2)
As such, 90% compliance should be achieved by all code. People who code to a non-standard better be ok with Firefox and Safari users bitching all the time.
I myself prefer Firefox so by coding to Firefox, I can pretty much gurantee a high level of compliance and cross browser compatibility.
All in all, I stress cross browser compatibility above w3C compliance. B
Test then Hack (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty poor practice, but likely the norm.
I'm overseeing a web site redesign right now for client whose members are largely Mac users.
The coding crew hired by the designers are working with Internet Explorer though, so nearly every feature and many design choices need to be fixed so that the site will work for our Safari users. Or even non-current versions of Safari.
We specified from the beginning that everything on the site be platform and browser neutral, and are becoming somewhat unpopular for continually saying "But it doesn't work in Safari..."
Ulitmately what is needed is for clients of web design firms to demand that all work be compatible with at least Safari, IE, Mozilla, and Opera. Only then will designers create sites that are cross compatible from the beginning, instead of "fixing" thinsgs after the fact.
No and Yes. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I don't care. The validator is a mechanical tool. It's inherently flawed, understanding nothing of semantics, easily tricked into validating things which never should validate, and in a number of cases throwing incorrect warnings and errors. Having your website validate is a first step. A guideline to doing things the right way. It's not completely necessary. The <canvas> element (as specified by the WHATWG [whatwg.org], and implemented by Opera, Mozilla/Firefox/SeaMonkey and Safari (I'm reasonably certain)) will cause errors to be thrown, yet one can imagine cases where its use is already perfectly acceptable. (Just as long as you don't use it on a client website, or at least not without full understanding of the implications by the people there of using something which can change out from under them at any moment, and their responsibility to track those changes.)
Yes, I care. I'm a professional web developer. Of course my website validates, besides also being completely accessible and being as semantically meaningful as it can possibly be. It's just a little showcase of my technical expertise. And yes, I care, as in: if you as a fledging web developer come to me on IRC or on some mailinglist for help with your website, you'd better be damned certain that your website validates before bothering with me, as I'm not going to spend any time on what would otherwise almost certainly turn out to be a problem caused by your invalid code.
Those two points made: wow, what's with the harping on ACID 2? Yes, it's a nice test to spur browser makers on to come closer to being perfectly interoperable, but it tests a pretty arbitrary range of rendering bugs, and all browsers save for IE are pretty much interoperale on it at this point. (Firefox only on the reflow branch, to be sure, but that's set to land Real Soon Now, and as has been explained often [squarefree.com], ACID 2 came at the worst possible time in the Mozilla development cycle.
Re:No and Yes. (Score:2)
you'd better be damned certain that your website validates before bothering with me, as I'm not going to spend any time on what would otherwise almost certainly turn out to be a problem caused by your invalid code.
OK, so what happens when somebody asks you "I get this and this and this error; how do I modify my page to make it validate?" What good is it to declare yourself closed to such questions? And what happens when it turns out that the web server is modifying the page on its way to the W3C's valid
do i care? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:do i care? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:do i care? (Score:2)
Acid2 is NOT A "Complaince" Test (Score:3, Informative)
To me, compliance is very important. Not only can you be sure that it will render properly in every proper, compliant browser, but it will also be easy to add on to and change stuff.
Besides, as long as you aren't trying to jump through IE css-fix hoops, compliance is usually as easy as encasing all of your variables with quotes.
Re:Acid2 is NOT A "Complaince" Test (Score:5, Informative)
Have you actually bothered to read the Acid2 page? Because I hear this repeated all the time, and it's downright misleading.
There is a checklist of about a dozen things the Acid2 page tests. Incorrect code is just one of them. It is necessary to include incorrect code in a test like this. How else are you going to check whether a browser follows the CSS error handling rules?
It's incorrect code, sure, but it's incorrect code that has a defined rendering according to the CSS specifications. It's not something a compliant browser would trip up on. There is a correct way to parse the incorrect code, and the Acid2 page tests to see if a browser parses it correctly - among many other things it tests for.
Where are you guys getting this idea that the Acid2 test is all about error handling? It's a very small part of the test, but plenty of Slashdotters seem convinced that the test revolves around broken code and nothing else. Was there a weekly meeting I missed wher eyou all got this myth drilled into your heads?
Reasons to validate (Score:5, Informative)
Reposted from something I wrote a while ago [evolt.org]
There are very few good reasons these days to write invalid code. Mostly it's just ignorance and apathy that causes people to write invalid code.
Re:Reasons to validate (Score:5, Insightful)
Using Flash = Validation Fail (Score:3, Insightful)
(oh and just because lots of sites and ads do annoying things with Flash, please don't assume that I do... like any tool it can be used or misused.)
Re:Using Flash = Validation Fail (Score:5, Informative)
Look [deconcept.com] again [alistapart.com].
Re:Using Flash = Validation Fail (Score:2)
Re:Using Flash = Validation Fail (Score:2)
Re:Using Flash = Validation Fail (Score:2)
http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=13756934 [google.com]
Anyone who answers "no" to this headline... (Score:4, Informative)
Is a fool who doesn't deserve to be involved in web development.
The Web would never have been much more than an academic experiment without web standards. Anything that has a sufficiently large group of people that use it at various levels needs standards. Think road traffic is bad now? Imagine if there were no lines on the roads, no standardised street signs, or even pavement. Getting anywhere would be total chaos, and most of us would be doing it on foot.
Sure, Opera 9 is the only browser released for public use that passes acid2, but the Gecko [e-gandalf.net] codebase achieved this a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we'll likely have to wait for Firefox 3 in order to experience it.
IE7b2 is complete as far as standards compliance is concerned, so you might as well go ahead and test it now. It still has the worst compliance compared to all other non-MS browsers.
The distance between any W3C recommendation and the browsers is a result of 2 things: vagueness in the document, and how any browser vendor decides to interpret it (if at all).
The biggest threats to web standards aren't MS, WHATWG, Motorola, or any other entity.
Number one: Quirks Mode. As long as browsers try to correct invalid documents, there is not real incentive for valid documents to be produced. Interoperability can't be fully achieved, and machine-to-machine exchange of data remains tenuous.
Number two: Nomenclature and Authority. Part of the W3C's problem is the terms they use to identify the stages of a standard. "Draft" is understandable, but labeling a final document "Recommendation" almost begs people to ignore it at will. Furthermore, the W3C just produces documents, and there is no body anywhere to monitor and enforce standards compliance among browser vendors. I believe the W3C should be absorbed into an existing technical organization which people actually respect, probably IEEE.
Anyone who doesn't care about web standards might as well go back to 1998-99 and try to keep riding the bubble.
Re:Anyone who answers "no" to this headline... (Score:2)
Try giving your speech to somebody who is paying you for your time, THEN get back to us.
Re:Anyone who answers "no" to this headline... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, CSS is just frustrating as hell to use. IMO, it's not significantly better than doing layout using tables. Especially since WYSIWYG editors will show you the table layout in progress, but usually choke on CSS layouts.
Re:Anyone who answers "no" to this headline... (Score:5, Insightful)
I follow the standards to the best of my ability and test in all major browsers until something breaks (thanks IE, thanks a lot) which is when I break out the hacks until the page works correctly for everyone.
So do I follow standards? Well, when you get right down to it, no, I don't. I follow them up until the point that they prevent me from doing my job, then they get tossed out the window.
I'm a standards nazi. (Score:2)
I run my own indie web design business (targeting artists and musicians), and also do web design through my full time job (local newspaper - we do contracted web design, too). I make sure that ALL my clients' sites are HTML 4.01 Strict compliant (Or XHTML Strict), and work hard to make them at least functionional for people using TTS readers and text-mode browsers. When it comes to rendering for IE, I usually specify a second IE-only stylesheet.
Once standards compliant, I test in all major browsers, plu
What's the Strict equivalent to li value? (Score:2)
I make sure that ALL my clients' sites are HTML 4.01 Strict compliant
So what do you do when you want to start an ordered list at a value other than 1? Example: the track listing of the album Follow the Leader by Korn that must start at 13, or top 10 lists that must start at 10 and step by -1. In HTML 4.01 Transitional and XHTML 1.0 Transitional, the deprecated value attribute of the li element does this, but like other deprecated elements, it's not present in Strict. How do you work around this? Until I
Re:What's the Strict equivalent to li value? (Score:2)
I believe that the numbers in an ordered list are part of the document, not part of the presentation of the document.
Take the track listing for Follow the Leader and put it into a table with columns "Track #," "Title," and "Length." Then you can't use ordered lists anymore (at least, not while retaining useful semantics). And, if you allow the users to sort the table by columns other than "Track #", then you cannot use any kind
More or Less (Score:2)
I've never much been one for standards compliance in the past. I designed for the best browser around (mostly Netscape at the time) and didn't look back. Then again, I was a newbie then.
These days I'm trying to go standards-based but the simple fact is that CSS is powerful and thus complex. The fact that various browsers interpret it differently is a major PITA as well. I've been trying especially hard to eliminate tables and I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it's a stupid idea, because CSS ju
table vs. div (Score:2, Informative)
I would like to ask a follow-up question: Do the replacement of tables with div-elements really help anybody (besides giving job security to web developers)?
Note that I am not at all against css. But I just find the table-tag very usefull for layout. If you need to do a three-column layout it will be much easier and give cleaner code to just use a table, than to use one of the many [incutio.com] css "hacks" needed to give the wanted result in most browsers. If you want the layout to do something "extra" (eg. "make the
Re:table vs. div (Score:5, Informative)
You're asking the wrong question. It's not about replacing <table> elements with <div> elements. It's about using the most appropriate element type and leaving the presentation up to CSS. Sometimes that means using a <table> element, sometimes that means using a <div> element, and sometimes it means using something completely different, like <ul>.
The thing is, it's not easier or cleaner. In fact, it's usually the opposite. With CSS, you develop the layout code once, and apply it to all the pages on your site simultaneously. With tables, you have to hack up stupid <tr>s and <td>s for each and every page you do. Mindless, boring, repetitive work.
This sentence makes no sense. Semantics describe what individual parts of the page mean and are encoded with HTML elements. They have nothing to do with the layout or CSS. Why would "floating something in a strange way" be semantically wrong? Floating things happens on a completely different conceptual level to the semantics. On the other hand, describing something as a table, when it's really a heading or an image, is obviously semantically wrong.
Re:table vs. div (Score:3, Informative)
NOTE: I use CSS. However, I have found it's much easier to flog tables into doing what I want, DIV's have never been that co-operative for me. CSS beats <font> tags any day, though.
Re:table vs. div (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's HTML that has semantics, XML is just a markup syntax, so it's definitely about marking information up precisely.
Yes, and in order to decide upon the best presentation, a user-agent (e.g. a browser) needs to know what kind of information it is getting. Hence marking up tables as tables, headings as headings, and lists as lists, not marking up everything as tables.
Re:table vs. div (Score:2)
The technical reason for using div's rather than tables is growing more and more prevalant today. The seperation between content and display is a very important distinction th
I do care, but. . . (Score:2)
Furthermore, many [oscommerce.com] open [drupal.org] source [mamboserver.com] projects [dotnetnuke.com] generate HTML output that is so far from compliant that it's easier to just give up and rely on quirks and conditional comments to make things work, in comparison to spending the many man-
My employer requires that I care! (Score:2)
In practice - our main website actually doesn't validate! Our (proprietary) content management system munges code, so that even if I enter valid xhtml,
Not really (Score:2)
A lot of stuff has changed since then. My site has a new URL, it now carries a basic doctype and a lone meta tag.
I've developed my ideas a lot since then, through discussion about this iss
Yes, of course (Score:2)
(I use the assert_valid_markup or assert_valid_asset plugin)
I hate to break it to you guys... (Score:3, Insightful)
Flame on, but remember that I am on your side here - just more of a realist
Great point!! (Score:2)
The article talks so much about how not supporting multiple devices and such will slash your market share. He's obviously either academic or on one of those lame standards committees. How much business do I really lose because all 20 of the Palm Pilot surfers don't visit my site? It has ZERO impact to my business and I could care less about those users.
And, almost by definition, standards are 1-3 YEARS behind technology so embrace as needed, but don't let them hold you
Validating is less work (Score:2, Flamebait)
How I write web pages (and web applications): Code it, open in Opera, look for obvious errors, hit Ctrl-Alt-V to validate the page using the W3C validator. If W3C says the page is valid HTML, my work on that page is done. Else, fix what the validator marks as wrong. If a browser can't render the final page properly, the browser is broken, not my page. I don't have to test my page for hours with a heap of browsers, some quick validator runs are all I need.
No, I'm not a web designer. I prefer pages that can
Only if... (Score:5, Interesting)
On a more serious note, the only way to solve the problem is to have browsers shame non-complient pages. Specifically, if IE7 displayed a dialog that said, "This web site is constructed improperly and might not work as expected" every time it hit an invalid page, things would change VERY FAST.
oh, the irony (Score:3, Interesting)
it's almost impossible to make nonstandard code this way
the irony is that firefox and ie have no problems with this, while opera doesn't support xslt transforms at all
so the most compliant standard browser isn't up to snuff with the most compliant type of code methodology
(which, in a way, makes sense, because by avoiding xslt work, opera can continue to be the extremely lightweight browser it is... you can't support everything if your biggest selling point is how lightweight you are)
Yes, and without hacks. (Score:3, Insightful)
I not only validate my pages, but I also don't use any HTML or CSS "hacks". Sometimes this means using tables for non-tabular data. Sorry to trample on current web dogma, but users won't notice "semantic code" - they will notice a site that doesn't render properly in their browser due to CSS hacks. I didn't have to change a thing to make my sites work in IE7. If you use hacks, you probably can't say the same.
Besides, if you truly want a semantic web, you should code your pages in OWL [w3.org]! It's the logical conclusion of the current trend. I specialized in knowledge representation and reasoning and I could never understand what that language was getting at.
I care if it's ADA 508-compliant, for disabilities (Score:3, Insightful)
But if you're selling something, especially selling something to government entities in the US, or you're developing educational and informational sites for the public, compliance with web accessibility standards is of the utmost importance and trumps W3C any day of the week.
Of course, good W3C compliance makes it easier to retrofit non-508-compliant pages. And 508-compliant pages are much easier to make W3C compliant, conversely.
But at the end of the day, it's whether the site is accessible to everyone, not the coding standard, that really matters to the bottom line or the lawyers.
Microsoft and web standards support (Score:5, Informative)
This is often shouted and an easy way to bash MS. It's also completely wrong.
Every web browser released by Microsoft from IE3 onwards has been more standards-compliant than any Netscape browser released around the same time. IE3 was the first major browser (outside of W3C testbeds) with CSS support. IE4 brought CSS-P support, while NS4 introduced the totally non-standard LAYER tag, then made a bad stab at implementing CSS-P under sufferance. IE5/Mac was easily the most standards-compliant browser on the Mac for years. The Mozilla project had been going for a while when IE6 came out, and Mozilla might be considered the better browser of the two if you rate standards compliance several miles above stability and speed.
The reason IE6 is bashed so hard by designers these days is not that IE6 was a particularly bad release. It's that it's bad by today's standards, and nothing's been done to fix it. This is a different issue, and one that the IE7 team has been loudly busting a gut to address. (There is also the utterly shameful issue of IE6's many security problems, which is a different argument, but it's one of the main reasons I've been using Mozilla-based browsers since 1.0)
And if you're still not convinced of anything other than Firefox's total superiority over IE in all standards-related matters, how about we dig up an issue of HTML4 compliance which IE's had right for years, and Mozilla/Firefox never has. [yoz.com]
This is like counting "security patches" (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuts. This is as bad as counting "security patches" as if all bug were equally important.
You link to the fact that Mozilla renders one character incorrectly, while ignoring things like the fact that MSIE fails to render large chunks of standard compliant pages [satzansatz.de] at all. They just vanish, poof. If these were the only two bugs, I suspect you'd say that they were "equally standards compliant" wouldn't you? After all, they only have one bug each, right?
Bah I say.
--MarkusQ
Don't blame the browsers (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a wee bit disingenuous to blame browsers for the lack of strictly validating web pages out there. I'd venture that upwards of 90% of the issues you see when you validate pages against the HTML 4.0 schema are not there because the author had to violate the standard in order to achieve the effect in some non-compliant browser. They are there because the author achieved the effect he wanted and did bother to check whether he had, or could, achieve it in a standards-compliant way. From the beginning, browsers tried to degrade gracefully in the face of invalid input, and as long they do that there will continue to be a lot of invalid input out there.
when i *finish*? (Score:5, Insightful)
no, when i *start* a website, i'm running it through the validator. producing valid html and css isn't some kind of bonus afterthought. it's something you do from line 1.
Abides by HTML standards, not W3C (Score:4, Funny)
This brings to mind the software developers that howl about their Interface Standards ( I can't even remember the acronym they use for these standards ) I've supported the development of software for the past 3 years, and have yet to look at these Interface Standards.
I focus on the end-users eyeballs. If some developer comes along and wants to complain about my syntatical correctness - they can either copy/past my HTML to make it better - or provide a patch for my software. The regular users are quite satisfied.
Browsers and Standards (Score:4, Informative)
In short I don't think its possible to write a standards compliant page and have it display in IE properly, as long as this situation persists, it will be impossible to push "standards" on the internet. If the standards don't display correctly on 90% of the computers, what are you supposed to do?
Standards created lots and lots of.. fanatics (Score:3, Insightful)
Validation fanatics:
They believe that they should unconditionally comply with the W3C (and the other) validators and this means they did a good page.
They compare the validators to the compiler syntax checks other languages do before compilation. Of course, no compilator in the world will stop you from writing buggy crappy useless programs, but they don't like to talk about that.
Another thing many of them don't assess, is that validators are just a guide, not God, and like any software tool, they have bugs and can miss plenty of code flaw types, or print code warnings or even code errors where there are none.
An advice to validation fanatics: your web page won't be seen in a validator, it'll be seen in a browser.
XHTML fanatics:
Anything less than XHTML 1.1 Strict is crap. In certain cases they might do a great compromise and go for 1.0.
XHTML is just a rehash of HTML4 as an XML dialect. Unless you need to take advantage of your code being XML, there's no big advantage to using XHTML now* . All of the talk about future compatibility or how HTML 4 is obsolete is nonsense. Browsers will render HTML 1 for ages to come, same can be said for HTML 4.1, which still a nice, valid standard.
*exception: mobile browsers strictly requiring XHTML Mobile Profile this is still no XHTML 1.1 support, like many XHTML fanatics believe.
What XHTML fanatics forget is, it's not easy to write a real XHTML page nowadays, that would run in both existing and old HTML browsers (that actually includes IE6: over 85% market dominance) and XHTML browsers.
XHTML fanatics sometimes make basic mistakes, like putting contents of [style] or [script] blocks in comments, or forgetting to put them in CDATA blocks, in both cases, the resulting code is a broken XHTML page if it runs in strict mode. The reason they don't see it, is that XHTML browsers interpret XHTML like HTML, since it's served with the HTML MIME Type (if served with Application/XML, it'll break IE).
"No tables for layout" fanatics
So yes, W3C said it's not recommended to use tables for layout. And it's indeed not nice: the classic usage of tables for layot is a huge mess of plenty of table cells, 4-5 nested tables in one another, the code is unreadable and unmanagable without a WYSIWYG editor (and that in itself, spells trouble if the web dev/designer has no clue).
However, fanatics go further: they open the source of most site they visit, looking for "clues": if you do use tables for layout the site is marked invalid, the site author an idiot, and the site's actual contents discarded.
If you ask a "No tables for layot" fanatic for help and he sees you use a table, you can be laughed at, insulted, bashed on and so on.
The funny reality: CSS is still defficient as a layout tool for some pretty basic layout schemes. The workarounds include laughable stunts like 4-5 nested [div]-s or more (i.e. table tag mess in its new form), 3000px wide bitmaps with transparent areas and so on and so on.
So these types of fanatics will advise you to either go for display-type:table (not working in IE), go for the ugly hacks, or change your layout. The irony you need display-type:table in CSS is worth a separate post on its own.
Truth is, there's no drawback to using very simple tables styled with CSS for your layout, if there's no simple way to do it with CSS. No modern search engine or browser in the world has a problem with tables. No modern screen reader has problems with tables. No modern mobile browser has problems with tables. Try it in Opera (SHIFT+F11) and see how horizontal layouts made in tables are properly broken up vertically to allow for easy reading on a mobile device.
"Don't use crappy browser" fanatics
These guys believe it's their mission to talk, enforce, advice and so on their visitors to switch from their "crappy" browser (usually IE), to a better browser like Firefox. They also don't mind l
Re:A relevant quote (Score:5, Informative)
It does not solve problems for you or guarantee much of anything, but it allows you to see your formatting code in a more objective way. As a bonus, it can help you spot potential problems, mistakes, and open your eyes to some of the structure you are relying upon.
I always use the Tidy [sourceforge.net] Firefox extension [mozilla.org]. It is a little friendlier than the online W3C parser interface. Disclaimer: not a professional web designer.
Re:A relevant quote (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A relevant quote (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A relevant quote (Score:3, Interesting)
You've got it backwards. Historically, especially in medicine, but
in other fields as well, practice never matches theory until the
generation that was practicing before the theory was developed is
replaced by the generation that was learning to practice once the
theory was mature.
Generally speaking, then theory and practice disagree, it's because
the practitioners are resistant to re-learning how to apply their craft.
If a theory is in fact wrong, it general