Is W3C Compliancy necessary?

[realbriguy]

I am just wondering if there is any benefit to ensuring that my web site complies with the World Wide Web Consortium's compliancy for HTML 4.01?

[grahamstewart]

By declaring the DTD that your site is written in and validating your code to ensure it uses the DTD correctly, you are helping to "future proof" your site from browser changes.

You are also ensuring that your site will display correctly on any browser that renders the DTD in a standards compliant manner.

You don't have to validate your site, but then you don't have to spell check it either.

See [valet.htmlhelp.com...] and [htmlhelp.com...] for some more good reasons to validate.