Web Standards - The Truth?

CSparkes

Senior Member
I have have never gone to the full bother of meeting the web standards over last few years. I code in CSS and never had any issues with browser compatibility when testing in all OS's & Browsers etc.....

When I have done tests it always seems to find errors which to me seem irrelevant, so could someone tell me why I should code to web standards etc.....
 
This is the problem with me. On a site I did recently, it told me the <body> tag was incorrect.... err how now? Not only that, but it listed it about 27 times, so I couldn't ever be XHTML compliant, and anyone who checked must've thought I was incompetent on first glance.

Yet still, it's important because people wanna see it on a designers site. Harrumph.
 
One thing that instantly springs to mind is accessibility... whilst you can see the site on the various browsers with no problems, and it all displays as you intended, there's large parts of W3C compliant code that are in place to help support accessibility for users who have disabilities. I'm sure Jazajay will have some more specific examples on this if he spots this thread as he's more knowledgeable on this area than anyone else I know! :)
 
Ok i appreciate the accessibility and make sure all my sites are that for all users, etc...

But recently my sites get errors for using "behavior: url(main/iepngfix.htc);" which allows clear PNG's as backgrounds. This makes no difference to users with disabiltes as far as i can tell.
 
Yeah as Greg has stated being standard complaint can mean that your site is accessible and it does help to make sure that a basic level of accessibility is achieved which helps across the board TBH.

The reason you are getting an error, in that case, is because you need to separate your logic.
That would validate if it is in a CSS file, wouldn't make the CSS file validate to my knowledge, but that's another topic, and would work as follows. ~
<!--[if lte IE 6]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie6fix.css" media="screen" /><![endif]-->

Then in the ie6fix css file write ~
img{behavior:url(main/iepngfix.htc)}

Now that would give you the same effect but to standards as your logic is separated.
Now separating your logic has at least 2 major benefits ~
1. Reduction in code bloat, which helps in maintenance, and performance.
2. Caching which improves your page load time and decreases your server strain.

Now the thing most people get fed up with is the endless list of errors. However due to the fact that errors cascade by fixing 1 error sometimes you can fix 6 or even 20 other errors, and you should always start at the top for that reason.

Tims body tag error I imagine would have been down to not closing a tag. This then gives you an overlap in the tags which are ending and thus flags it up as an error, when it isn't, the error is the fact another tag wasn't closed properly. As I said cascade.

Another main benefit to coding to standards is you actually reduce your work load. For example most modern browsers fix errors for you, that is why 9 times out of 10 it will look fine. However IE6 can cause you more fixing due to improper and invalid code, that and other minor browsers, so by coding to standards it can help to make the site look better across all user agents.

Fixing errors is TBH a minor thing if you use the W3C validator, and can only take a very small amount of time.

Copy the source into the textarea field and select view source and it will guide you to the exact error, well 9.9 times out of 10 anyway.

If you have any problems with any other errors, let me know. :)

Jaz

Key:
Purple ~ XHTML
Green ~ CSS
 
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