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.)

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