Abyss Knight

It has come across my mind today that many of us web-developers are starting to support the W3C web standards. Whether you picked the archaic HTML 4.01, or the XHTML 1.1 Transitional, or any other standard for that matter you have most likely noticed something very odd. No one cares. Time and time again I have to ask myself, why do I support standards when all people really want are flashy graphics and some text? What is wrong with forgetting to close a tag as long as I remember to post those awesome pictures of that thing, with the thing?

Well, obviously, my answer to this is completely and conclusively non-conclusive. I have friends who are just now learning about standards the hard way, via the validator. They’ve heard me whine to them that they need to start closing their br tags and inputs, and that they really should strive to get that mystical badge of honor, This document is valid (X)HTML! Wait, what now? I still haven’t even begun to beat around the issue at hand. Oh no, we’re not even close to that yet. So finally my friends have their page validating, and still using archaic tables for layouts. Do what? Tabular data? No, that is my layout. Now the funny thing is, you aren’t supposed to use tables for non-tabular data, right? Yeah, the validator could care less. As long as the block elements and inline elements all line up like ducks in a row, the validator puts its seal of approval on it. So tell me again, why do I need to validate my code?

I have heard so many people explain to me why keeping to the W3 web standards is a great idea. Heck, I’ve read articles about it trying to explain it to other people. The final point is, no one really cares. If the page loads up, and looks nice, very few will complain. Personally, I cringe everytime I see a br tag that isn’t closed, and I will certainly email a webmaster if there is a JavaScript error or if their site is not accessible (508), yet government funded. I am standards crazy, however, it doesn’t matter. So long as browsers render pages in quirks mode, no one shall care.

Don’t get me wrong, I think at some point standards will be so incredibly useful everyone will want to follow them. However, logistically speaking, it will not happen next year, or the year after, or the year after that… Until standards get to that point, I will probably have to use links (the browser) to weed through all the excess animated gifs, banner ads, and fluff. [I actually did this the other day because the cable company chopped our bandwidth... very, very interesting.]

So, in conclusion… If you want to spread standards, don’t tell people they should do it ’cause you said so. Tell them something off the wall, crazy, and outrageous. Tell them the sky will fall if they don’t close the holes in their code. Then tell them about proper document structure. Yes, the navigation really does need to have a textual element, so I can read it in links. That’s another rant though.

For your viewing pleasure:

• http://www.webstandards.org/
• A List Apart: Accessibility = Good for Search Engines
• A List Apart: Taming Lists (List based navigation)

I could probably add links and garbage to this all day, but I won’t.