Are W3C Standards ImportantPosted by: rubiksx

Validation is a process that checks you websites coding against the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), this is done fore XHTML, CSS and other scripting for the web it’s a bit like spell checking your documents just for the web scripting. Visit W3C for more info.

Is it important part of web design

Got me thinking the other day this question I got asked, is it important to have valid Xhtml? Do designers make sure all there sites are built to W3C standards? I thought I would check some sites that millions of people use every day and I found some interesting results.

I looked at some of the worlds popular sites and I found that most of them where not even valid. Then I looked at people offering web design services and found that some where not valid at all so does this mean it’s not important?

Why it’s not important.

• To fix errors and warnings in code it may mean taking up more bits and code the file so may render and lot slower even though clean code can mean faster rending times
• Do people care as long as the site works? There are many top sites that are not valid yet they work across the board in the browsers and that’s good enough for most people.
• Can be a pain in the backside and time consuming to fix a lot of the errors and warnings to get it valid.

What are the benefits?

• Future Proofing: Technologies moving quickly these days and you never know what’s coming out next but with valid Xhtml you are more likely to have a working web site for when it happens.
• Google prefers nice coding: There have been tests on whether Google picks up on valid code and the results shown that valid XHTML was shown above sites with non valid sites
• Accessibility: Valid site is more likely to support all types of browsers and most screen resolutions.
• Rendering faster: Clean and valid code will increase the rendering time as the browsers have less thinking to do.
• Browsers correction: Non valid pages rely on the browser to auto-correct the code, each browser does this differently. So if you forget to close a tag, Firefox might ignore this but internet explorer doesn’t and you end up with a layout that doesn’t work.
• Satisfaction: For me and our team it very satisfying to show that the code is valid it shows that you are up to date with the World Wide Web. However annoying it can be sometimes.

Conclusion

Well I personal think it’s important to have clean code it looks good and its good practice. But it’s not the end of the world if it’s not as I have seen plenty of great designs without valid code.

I recommend using valid code you can check to see it your site is valid at W3C Validator to check your site.