Feb 16 2007 at 2:55pm
Is Validation Really that Important? What About Standards?
I’ve come across a few interesting posts on code validation & standards today. Roger Johansson says that Validation alone is not enough while Stuart Brown believes that Web Standards Don’t Matter (As much as you think). While I think Brown goes a bit too far in his post, I believe that his post has a point.
First of all, following web standards isn’t just about validation. We’ve seen examples of that in the examples of bad code threads. Secondly, I partially agree with Brown’s point that web standards aren’t the be all and end all. It is important to me that my code is valid and semantically correct. This is what I do for a living, after all. But for me there are more important things to worry about. Like authoring good content, providing more features for users, and improving my search rankings.
We can look at it like this:
(actual proportions somewhat arbitrary and certainly flexible; not intended to apply equally to all types of sites)
Web standards, and validation in particular, are a tiny, tiny piece of big picture of web design. It is important? Of course. And once you know what you’re doing it’s easy to write valid, semantic code. But is it really what is going to make a site great? Probably not – at least not without significant attention to the other factors.
(I’d also like to make a big distinction between writing really sloppy 90’s era code and something that is almost standards compliant. 90’s era code: bad, should be elimitated. Almost standards compliant: well, it’s not going to kill you.)
Adam Kinder February 19th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Most of our corporate site validates, but I can’t say the same for the CSS. I think I made quite a few errors, and doubled up some of my elements by mistake.
It’s mostly div’s now, and not loaded down with tables like I used to do when I first started. PSGO ( in 1998 ) was all tables, and lots of nested tables. It was a nightmare to work on.
Megan February 19th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I almost never validate my CSS either. It never even comes to mind, but then normally if there’s something wrong you’ll see it in the display.
Catarina March 29th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
The first time I made a website (1999 when I was 13 o_o), it had frames. A year later I quit frames and started to use tables, and relied on them until 2006 when I finally learned proper semantic HTML and CSS. I think validation helped me when I was just starting to develop standards-compliant websites because it was a good way to learn from the mistakes I made. Nowadays I don’t need to pay that much attention to it anymore because I have more experience, so I spend more time on the other important stuff. Btw, I loved that pie-chart.