W3C standards

How many of you follow the recommendations from W3C?

[DrDoc]

In my opinion, writing valid code is the easiest thing in the world. The pages load faster, the look great in all browsers (less great in some older, but still ok) .. and I don't have to worry about any tweaks or anything!

The funny thing is that all pages even validate against the Strict DTD, well, unless I'm using the "target" attribute for links. My CSS validates, and I'm even able to write pages that conform to WCAG1.0 triple-A level. (http://www.w3.org/WAI)

It's not hard, it doesn't take any extra time to "worry" about valid code. In fact, I feel that I can code faster and with less problems than I encountered before.

Knowing this, it makes me sad to see how many crappy pages there are, major corporations as well as personal pages. Their code isn't valid, it takes forever to load the page, and it looks funky in even the most common browsers.

Now, this is where I turn to you .. You are all webdesigners of some degree.

How do you feel about valid code?
How do you feel about current standards, like XHTML, CSS, and WAI?

[txbakers]

I make sure all my pages validate to 4.01 Transitional HTML.

If there little syntax things that come up, I don't worry about those. (such as thinking a querystring in a form Action is an entity).

[RussellC]

I also make sure all my pages validate to XHTML 1.0 Transitional with Valid CSS as well.

[jaybee]

I haven't done the WAI thing yet, but I cant help myself, not checking HTML and CSS.
And when I check XHTML I go the whole nine yards. I turn everything on.

[creative craig]

I validate for HTML 4.01, XHTML and CSS in all my sites, except one which is the first one I ever published and is to be updated as soon as I can find the time :)

Craig

[DrDoc]

Well, about query strings .. The validator is right. An & should be & in a query string. The browser will translate the entity before submitting the page.

[Mohamed_E]

I go through some effort to validate to the Transitional standards, I believe that I currently only have one "error" on my site. I am not obsessive about it, that particular piece of HTML code works, and the valid alternative is not obvious to me.

[DrDoc]

For those of you that validate to XHTML Transitional .. have you tried validating against XHTML Strict?
I find that there are only minor differences that I can handle changing ..

[pageoneresults]

How do you feel about valid code?

Strong enough that I've been an avid supporter of standards for over two years now.

Strong enough that I went through every single site I manage and validated the code at no charge to my clients.

Strong enough that I will not accept any new clients who refuse to make the necessary changes and validate their code.

Current standards seem fine to me. Unfortunately the browser developers (particularly IE) don't feel the same way.

It won't be long now before valid code is a requirement for some. We are a very small group of people aiming for higher standards in our own implementation.

I wonder what percentage of indexed sites in Google validate. Would you say it is less than 5%?

[g1smd]

I use the W3C validator to remove typos, nesting errors, duplicate tags and so on. I use it to find tags opened but not closed, or closed in the wrong order, and to find tags with required attributes that are missing, or attribute values with missing quotes, entity errors and so on. I also look for other obvious problems with the logic and structure of the code. All tags and attributes are in lower case, and all attributes are "quoted". I always use HTML 4.01 transtional.

I do occasionally leave some browser specific code in some pages (stuff like bgproperties="fixed" or browser-specific margin properties) so some of my pages aren't exactly 100% valid.

[edit] Hmmm. Popular Topic! Seven other posts in the time I wrote my little reply. [/edit]

[pageoneresults]

g1smd, I'm shocked to see you make such a statement...

I do occasionally leave some browser specific code in some pages (stuff like bgproperties="fixed" or browser-specific margin properties) so some of my pages aren't exactly 100% valid.

And here I was looking up to you as the crusader of validity! ;)

Both of those that you mention can be addressed using external css.

[DrDoc]

That's the spirit, pageoneresults!
Makes me happy to hear that someone knows what it's all about. And yes, unfortunately it's probably less than 5% that validate.

Valid markup and CSS is the medicine :)

[mavherick]

Validating code is now mandatory for me and I don't feel satisfied until my page validates.

I have a few friends currently taking courses in college and university, and the thing that amazes me is that none of them are aware of the W3C standards. I think teachers should at the very least inform their students about it, if not pushing them to produce standard code. I would consider it a core element if I was teaching web development in any form, but that's just me.

<added>I'm of course talking of schools in my area! How's the situation in yours?</added>

mavherick

[edited by: mavherick at 9:08 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2003]

[DrDoc]

mavherick, don't you think that it's because valid code wasn't important when they were in the business themselves? Today's professors and teachers are not always up-to-date ..

I still believe that it's up to us, as the web designers of today to enforce standards. The software companies don't, the schools don't ..

[dingman]

Everything I've ever put up since my first site validated. (The first one was abysmal, and has been replaced.) First did HTML 4.01 Transitional, then moved to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which is where most of my sites are now. New stuff, though, is being done in XHTML 1.1 ("strict", but AFAIK there is no other choice in XHTML.) I don't have any HTML 4.01 still up for the world to see (that I remember right now). The next site I have scheduled for an update still has a disclaimer saying that it's not strict because the CSS support isn't there in major browsers, but I'm very much looking forward to updating that one.

[victor]

I always aim for HTML 4.01 strict. I've never seen a business case for putting out badly formatted HTML.

[copongcopong]

I aim and created my pages in xhtml 1.0 transitional and it validates even css validates too. btw, if i use w3c's xhtml 1.0 strict, it validates too. :)

[mgream]

Definitely.

I employ these (using appropriate w3c validators):

W3C HTML 4.01/strict [strict is greater than necessary]
W3C CSS 2.0
W3C PICS 1.1 (RSAC, ICRA) [not sure how widely used this is, but some of my content has research / school / university / educational applicability]
W3C P3P 1.0 [increasingly important, relevant as i have subscription lists, but no cookies]
W3C WCAG 1.0 (AA) [AAA too difficult and not justifiable, AA sufficient to cover my class of users]

I don't find a case for these (or anything else not listed above):

RDF/RSS (geek appeal only)

I also looked at, and drew from, but don't conform to these (using appropriate validators, e.g. NIST / dcdot):

IEEE STD 2001-1999 [covers same area as WCAG]
dublincore metadata DCES 1.1 [use it in my backend scripts]

That's conformance covered, what about compatibility? You can be conformant to a standard, but incompatible / not-interoperable with other implementations of the standard.

I test with:

(text browsing)
lynx
links
w3m

(gui browsing)
amaya
netscape
mozilla
opera
iexplorer
epoc (psion)

(caches/proxies/se/etc)
google
alltheweb
looksmart
altavista
teoma
offline save

The hole in my testing is Macintosh, Linux, etc (a reasonable proportion of my users are Linux based - I'm not sure how my content renders for them).

Matthew.