Validate?

How important is it?

[rewboss]

I notice on the forum charter that there are no "Please check my site" posts allowed (shame, but I understand why), but it says if you want your site reviewed to use the W3C validator.

I wonder how important it really is to get your pages to validate. I use validators to check for improper nesting, failure to close tags etc, but that's about it. The thing is that I often end up using non-standard HTML to workaround various bugs and misfeatures.

How important is it for people to be able to display that "Valid HTML" button? I've usually found that those that do are pretty bland, as if the designer has been trying to create a page that is both cross-browser compatible and valid.

[tedster]

I well understand including non-valid HTML, especially when trying to cope with antique browsers. I do that, although not so frequently anymore. The few non-standard kludges I use are common enough that I am pretty sure they're not hurting the page's ranking.

But I'd say it's EXTREMELY important to know exactly where you're doing that, and why - and not to include any other non-valid code. In other words, be conscious and intentional -- eyes open to what you're doing.

It's amazing how many problems vanish when you get the validator habit. When I work with design teams where the validator habit is missing, it becomes obvious very fast, and it slows the development process.

Sometimes the "smallest" errors are enough to confuse a spider and really hurt a page in the search engines. That alone is a big enough reason for me.

[martinibuster]

Well said tedster. As I learned myself in this posting: [webmasterworld.com...]

I'm trying to get squeaky clean now. Trying.