Web Standards = 100% Validation?
October 12, 2004 73 | Comments (Closed)
Summary: Is anything less than 100% validation worthy of being called Web standards? I say, sure, why not?
I guess it’s “official”—Web standards means validation and nothing less.
I’ve met Ethan (who made the above post), and he’s a great guy and I’m assuming he’s not trying to imply that the work done on the ABC News site is anything less than a step in the right direction, but it sure seems that way. And it’s not only him. On mailing lists, posts and in comments I saw a similar sentiment.
It’s at times like these when I think the Web professional community needs to take a step back a realize what’s really important and acknowledge the positive.
Do we expect too much when it comes to standards support?
Ethan says:
I’m of the mindset that validation isn’t an ideal, it’s a necessary baseline.
and,
However, to say that validation is unimportant and then call your work web standards? Real world or otherwise, it smells like semantic snake oil to me.
I agree with these statements on principle, I disagree with the (perceived anyway) mentality that you have to have a valid site to say that you support Web standards. I understand, and have heard all the arguments and I simply do not agree. Maybe that is not the message the WaSP and others are trying to convey, but it sure comes off that way to me.
It makes me wonder if I should bother supporting Web standards. I mean if I can’t reach the “necessary baseline” than maybe I should drop the “semantic snake oil” and quit trying to support standards? After-all, the WaSP doesn’t pay the bills. :)
Frankly I think the people who are trying to push standards should encourage, support and praise any step in that direction. But what I saw yesterday was a whole lot of people bitching about shortcomings and pointing out errors. Don’t know about y’all. but as someone who believes in the promise and benefits of Web standards this turns me off.
But it’s not all about what I think. I’ve said my piece, what do you think? Does “Web standards” mean validation and nothing less?
Filed under: Web General
Comments
1. Mike D. said:
Thanks Keith. Agreed on all points. If improving standards support progressively isn’t good enough for people in the WaSP, then the WaSP simply isn’t an organization I will be listening to.
I really don’t understand why people feel the need to create imaginary wars in the world between people that are on the same side.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:08 AM | #
2. Michael said:
My main problem with validation zealots - and I’m not calling Ethan a zealot, just making an observation - is when they they start pointing fingers at non-escaped ampersands and things on that level.
If we find ourselves on that level, we’re clearly misunderstanding the point of validation.
It’s nothing more than a tool designed to help us strive towards standards compliance, rather than let us slip into code soup.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:08 AM | #
3. Nick Finck said:
Keith, let’s face it some people are just going to be stuck up on validation. I wish the web community could get over this and move on. I fully agree with what you stated above and I think we need to take baby steps in getting to where the web needs to go.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:08 AM | #
4. Faruk Ates said:
Keith, I’m 100% with you on this one.
Like I’ve written down in my article, the Case for XHTML, it doesn’t matter whether we do it 100% perfectly right from the start.
XHTML and Web Standards is a step-by-step process; we should, obviously, take it one step at a time, instead of trying to jump from start to finish.
Going one step at a time means: switching to XHTML, using semantic markup, trying to validate as much as we can, and not (yet) worrying about: right MIME-types, 100% validation, ‘perfect’ markup (ie. no tons of DIV elements etc.).
Just keep fighting the fight for Web Standards in your own pace, and people will appreciate you for it. Sure, some validation nuts may b*tch at you saying you’re “doing it wrong” and “you shouldn’t do XHTML if you can’t do it right!”, but just ignore them is what I say. Do things one step at a time, and don’t undermine the cause for Web Standards by switching back to counter-productive HTML.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:26 AM | #
5. Gabriel Mihalache said:
With programming languages (such as Java or C) the code won’t compile if a syntax error was made. No 2 ways about it. You either code something that conforms to the syntax or the error is politely showed and explained and no executable is compiled.
If browsers of the future would display an error if a page is not 100% valid XML, then we’d consider standards as a baseline. The guilt is with browser vendors who made them idiot-accessible so now everyone can nest a p tag in a page’s head can call it a site.
If web pages were compiled, like C, Java or Flash (.FLA -> .SWF) then all errors should be fixed at design-time. Those would be the days!
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:31 AM | #
6. Chris Vincent said:
While I agree that validation is not the end-all be-all of web standards, it really isn’t difficult to achieve. You have special cases where you have to make exceptions, such as advertising and embedded media, but for the most part, valid code should just come naturally, ampersands and all.
I’m not criticizing those who have advanced the cause of standards with these huge redesigns, as I’m sure they had their reasons. They got the job done, and the benefits being reaped by the standards solution are being made known to more and more people and companies. But for most situations, validation is neither hard nor time consuming.
I’m glad nobody ever had these sorts of debates over C/C++ and other languages… we’d be arguing over how liberal compilers should be when parsing the code, how best to handle the mistakes of the programmers… It’s a loose comparison, but it works for me. After all, you simply can’t compile a program missing a *single* semicolon at the end of a statement, and this is an even smaller detail than encoded ampersands in XHTML documents (yes, I know the many flaws in this analogy).
The real issue here is that some people seem to think that people who do big redesigns using standards are actually *harming* the cause. That’s just extreme. Back to the “real world”.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:31 AM | #
7. Thomas Baekdal said:
This one is a tricky one.
One hand, if web-standards do not mean correct validation, then every simple site on the web is a standard based site (apart from those using Microsoft of Netscape exclusive code).
The only thing that really sets your site apart if the site validates.
BTW: The only way to create true interoperability using xhtml is to keep your code 100% validated. Any stray tag will ruin the import scheme.
Of course when people are discussing web standards, they mean the XHTML+CSS standard. Very few in the web design community would acknowledge that a table-based site as standard compliant.
So, I have 2 definitions of a standard compliant website:
1: One that validates 100% (regardless if it uses html3/table layout or xhtml)
2: One that uses xhtml, xml/xls, css - with a semantic markup (lists as list, headlines as headlines etc.) - regardless of a few minor validation errors.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:34 AM | #
8. Faruk Ates said:
Gabriel Mihalache said:
Gabriel, even TODAY’S browsers do that. Just try it in Mozilla, Firefox, Opera or any other Standards-compliant browser: send it an invalid XHTML page sent as application/xhtml+xml and you’ll get an instant XML Error page, and no other output.
Of course, that’s only if the document is invalid XML – it may be valid XML and invalid XHTML, but then it’ll still display properly.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:37 AM | #
9. Simon Jessey said:
I partly agree with you. I certainly think that any step in the right direction should be applauded; however, I don’t understand why it is so difficult to have 100% validation.
Most of the ABC site validation errors involved ampersands. Even with some form of content management system, encoding iffy characters is a pretty straightforward task. I don’t really think there is any good excuse for failing validation, with the possible exception of legacy documents.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:38 AM | #
10. Roger Johansson said:
Yes, moving towards web standards, even without achieving 100% validation, is great. Much, much better than sticking with tag soup. And getting it all right, all at once, on a site that huge, is all but impossible. Great job, Mike!
That said, if you decide to shrug your shoulders at unencoded ampersands, just be aware that they may cause real world problems. It’s not very common, but it does happen.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:38 AM | #
11. Faruk Ates said:
Thomas Baekdal said:
Thomas,
I disagree. What sets these new XHTML (-yet-invalid) sites apart is the fact that they at least make an attempt to head into a modern-day Standards-based world. Sure, HTML 3 tables are a standard too, but it’s outdated and far from useful nowadays.
What sets apart these XHTML sites is the fact that they make a great deal of it to be more accessible and flexible, such as the Web should be. They may not do it perfect right from the box, but the Internet is in its earliest stages, still – we should tackle these issues one at a time, not all at once.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:42 AM | #
12. Ryan Petrello said:
With all of this in mind, what does the WaSP think of Mr. Zeldman’s recent redesign of the Kansas City Chiefs website, which, oh-by-the-way, does not validate either? No criticism there, eh?
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:45 AM | #
13. Dave P said:
Here we go again, eh Keith?
My POV, for what it’s worth is that of a programmer’s; to me a site’s validity is extremely important. Almost every advantage to using standards compliant code hinges on those standards being held to - otherwise, what’s the point?
Whether a page doesn’t validate because of an unencoded ampersand, or because of a missing “>” or doctype, the result is the same - it’s invalid. There’s really no grey zone.
I see your point Keith, and honestly, I don’t think you’re as convinced of it as you make out to be. I remember you worked with others to fix your invalid comment issue. You saw the problem, acknowleged it, and found a solution.
This is quite different from Mike’s stance, who bascially says he knows of standards, but just doesn’t care. His view is no different than Microsoft’s, which implements standards only when it finds them conveinent. Mike is a very talented designer, but should never be looked apon as a standards/usabiliy or general accessibilty advocate.
One should be encouraged for running half a marathon, but never as much as someone who actually finishes.
Nobody is perfect, and lord knows my sites don’t always validate, but to recognize this as a problem to be fixed (like a misplaced image) is the key.
To throw in the towel and declare “That isn’t important” (for whatever reason) is to simply be part of the problem, not the solution.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:46 AM | #
14. Keith said:
Dave P – The point I’m am 100% convinced of is that by taking what I feel is a negative stance and attitude toward these things you are ultimately breaking down and harming the message.
As well as dividing the community.
There is a reason why Mike says he doesn’t care (if he is in-fact saying that) and I imagine it has very little to do with the fact that he’s got validation errors.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:55 AM | #
15. Faruk Ates said:
Exactly!
These people are preaching the wrong things to the people that are already fighting the good cause, and thus seem to ignore the fact that 99% of the Web still needs to be converted in the first place. Converted, be made aware of Standards, or what have you.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:58 AM | #
16. steve said:
As far as I can see, to fully support ‘100% web standards’, you have to give up supporting IE, serving as xml etc, & give up on flash (ala article may solve this, but I never got this to work properly!). And what have we got left, a set of static uninspiring webpages that only web developers & geeks can access! Looks like we shall all be out of work very quickly!
Don’t get me wrong, I do support web standards, and always run my sites through the validator. It’s just I will be out of a job if my flash fails to appear on the CEO’s browser, or if I waste a day wondering why my noscript code won’t validate (has anyone got noscript to validate??).
I want my code to be perfect, unfortunately the rest of the world isn’t!
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:58 AM | #
17. Rimantas said:
Keith, define “standards”.
I think you forgot initial meaning of this word.
Technical meaning.
Or is it another round of ‘standards’ vs. ‘best practices’?
We may even call best practices of web development ‘web standards’ and those rules definde by TRs and DTDs ‘w3c standards’, but that won’t help to resolve confusion.
What does word ‘standards’ mean in other industry? Rigid sets of rules and parameters. If you don’t comply you don’t, end of story.
So from the technical and formal point Ethan is correct - it is not about sentiments, intentions, best practices it is about DTD and TR.
Would you be happy to buy a CD and find out it does not fit into your CD player - it is 130mm not 120. Would excuses like “well, not exactly standard size, but listen to the music! It rocks!”.
Every mention of ‘oh, those are just ampersends, who cares?’ reminds me theory of the broken windows. Well, take a look here
There are too links each with the same set of 14 variables. One of the links is coded with ‘that’s only ampersends’ approach, another one is coded properly. Try clicking them. Results may vary, but in the first case script gets only 2 variables instead of fourteen.
But hey, those are just ampersends…
Yes, validation means nothing. Sure, there are much more important issues in web development than getting site valid. Those, which users will see and feel instantly, without the help of validator. But hey… if we cannot get even valid code, will we really be doing everything else good enough?
What will we skip next?
How low will we let the bar drop?
We want to smoke out that old, crappy (insert your
definition here) IE out of the web - because it stops us.
And how long are we going to live with those old, crappy CMSes which make it sooo difficult to have
ampersends encoded like they should be?
Once again - I am not a fanatic, or standards freak. Given a choice between valid bloated non-semantic code, and invalid, but otherwise clean, accessible, semantic one - I’d definitely vote for the later. But clean and valid - that is what I want to have.
Posted on October 12, 2004 11:59 AM | #
18. Ethan said:
Okay, I’ve apparently gone off and fired more of a salvo than I’d intended, ticking off Mike Davidson and other folks I respect in the process. My post wasn’t intended to be as ad hominem as it ended up reading, but I obviously failed on that front; I’ve the utmost respect for Mike and his work, and do think that the ABC News redesign is successful on more than a few fronts.
The second thing I’d like to state is that each BUZZ post is the opinion of the individual author; this isn’t the gospel according to WaSP, just the opinion of one web guy in Cambridge. Please don’t paint the whole project as zealots because of one poorly written post of mine.
That said, I do feel pretty strongly about the points that I made in that post. I wasn’t reacting to the excellent work Mike’s done on ABC and elsewhere; rather, I bristled a bit at his terming the work a coup for “real-world web standards”. This seems a bit of a dig at the folks in the W3; I realize there’s a bit of an “ivory tower” stigma there, but they are folks working in the industry.
I will say that neither myself nor anyone else at the project expects a site to validate out of the box — I don’t think it’s realistic. Validation’s something that needs to be actively worked towards, something I know that most folks commenting here do on a daily basis. However, to say that validation isn’t a business goal because it’s impractical, unrealistic, or just something you don’t “care” about…well, that strikes me as a bit unfair to the people who have worked so hard to work out and teach standards-based development techniques. Techniques, I might add, from which the bottom lines of our projects benefit.
If you can’t validate when you go live, why instead can’t you make it a goal to achieve valid markup over a reasonable period of time? At the end of the day, I guess that’s why I was so harsh in my response — validation reflects not only the letter of standards, but also their spirit, as I made clear in my Buzz post. Implying that an invalid site is standards-compliant comes across to me as if you’re trying to have your cake and eat it, too.
Again, this is just my opinion – I apologize if I offended anyone with my original post, and hope that we can have a constructive discussion from here on out. If I’ve handicapped our chances for that, then I’m truly sorry.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:10 PM | #
19. Ian Fenn said:
The sense I got from Mike’s original announcement was that he feels validation isn’t quite as important as the big picture, namely the move of ABC News to css positioning and XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I couldn’t agree more.
All the best,
–
Ian
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:10 PM | #
20. Rimantas said:
Ian, that’s right, but it is not XHTML 1.0 transitional if it does not validate ;).
It is something nice with a doctype of XHTML, but not XTHML itself, even if it looks very similar.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:18 PM | #
21. Dave P said:
Keith
And what message is that? That following standards is only worthwhile when we consider it “real world”?
Doesn’t Microsoft do just that? By no means am I a validation nutcase, but I do beleive that if you profess to be a standards advocate you should at least attempt to follow the spec, and not completely disregard it, no matter how valid you or anyone else considers your argument to be.
Mike is a perfect example of how there really is no room for interptation with standards: His anti-validation stance starts with a seemingly (and I would agree) inconsequencial “unencoded ampersands” rant, but also includes missing alt tags (important for accessiblity), and (wtf?) “A non-closing tag is missing its trailing slash”.
This isn’t ignoring standards quirks, it’s promoting bad code, simply because the author is too lazy. You wouldn’t even be able to do this in a real programming language, why would XHTML be any different? It’s like saying spelling isn’t important, since you know what I meant anyway.
Now, there really is nothing wrong with not being a standards promoter, or being human and not having a 100% valid site all of the time. But to continue to promote oneself as a “standards promoter” and then pick and choose which parts of the specifications he wishes to use is simply hypocritcal. How am I supposed to convince others of the importance of alt tags when a “standards promoter” doesn’t really care about them? Why bother promoting any standards at all then?
In reality, I simply do not accept that I am doing more harm to the community for calling him on his stance than he is by ignoring standards he feels are “not important”, and then professing to be some sort of a promoter of those same standards.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:24 PM | #
22. Jonathan Holst said:
I don’t necessarily think a site has to be 100% valid to “support” web standards. For me, web standards are basically a mean to make all site work everywhere. That’s why we need rules. If a site works “everywhere” (I know that’s not possible) I don’t see any problems in it not being 100% valid. But if it doesn’t, we have a problem.
(ABC News works fine for instance).
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:37 PM | #
23. beerzie boy said:
Do the best you can and get the job done. It pays the bills and lets you see your kids.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:41 PM | #
24. Andy said:
I think we need to define web standards more loosely. We all know and use the term to mean various things already: Valid (X)HTML, Valid CSS, WAI Compliant, Bobby Compliant.
To my mind validation is the technical aspect to web standards, but it means so much more. It means professional ethics, it means being professional about the work, and that includes saying we can’t do things this way and have it validate, but we know it’s is most likely going to be redesigned long before any browsers refuse to read pages that do not validate so the differences are not important right now.
It means thinking about it and having standards, not necessarily meeting every “standard” out there.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:53 PM | #
25. Mike D. said:
Dave P.:
1) Please pick up a dictionary and look up the word “hyperbole” and perhaps you’ll understand the out-of-context snippets of my “March to Your Own Standard” post you cherry-picked a little better.
2) You said “It�’s like saying spelling isn’t important” and yet you have five spelling errors in your post. It seems you pick and choose which of your hard-and-fast philosophies to actually follow through on.
3) You call me lazy and you don’t even know me. In fact, you have absolutely *no* idea what obstacles people in my position are up against, and instead you take the naive, uninformed route and just assume things based on your own view of the world.
4) I’m not disregarding any specs here. I’m concentrating on what I can do correctly and not beating myself up for things outside my control. Why do I not care about 100% validation? Because it’s outside my control to achieve it at this time. It’s the same reason why I’m not pissed off that I can’t date Anna Kournikova. Would I like to? Yes. Is it possible for me at this time? Absolutely not… no matter what I do. So why beat myself up over it? I am an idealist who settles for pragmatism out of necessity. You are an idealist who shuns pragmatism out of naivete.
5) Yes, you ARE doing harm to the community by creating wars where there are none. You’re taking all of the people who work on the web and read this site and creating a divide whereby people must decide whether they think you are right or I am right. You are leaving no room for compromise and that is a bad thing. Getting things done in a large organization all is *all* about compromise and if you’d ever worked at a company with 400,000 people in it, you’d know that.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:56 PM | #
26. Rimantas said:
Jonathan and Andy - there is no need to change rules
or redefine something more losely. Omit DOCTYPE and
you will have what you want. In any case document type declaration is a plain lie in 99%+ cases, so omiting it would just be fair thing to do.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:58 PM | #
27. Hayo said:
Correct me if i’m wrong, but leaving out doctypes kicks browsers into quirksmode. So obviously, if you design using xhtml/css, you want it to work. the doctype makes it work, why omit it and cause more damage?
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:13 PM | #
28. Faruk Ates said:
Mike D: you do know they have a word for people like Rimantas, right? :)
We call ‘m Trolls; only out to cause heated debate and never care to look at the situation with any perspective.
They’re best ignored, because responding to them only gives them further reason to stick around and try to convince others to join the wrong gang.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:15 PM | #
29. Rimantas said:
Quirks mode for the quirks code.
That’s how doctype switching came to life.
And technically it is not that simple - some doctypes switch browsers rendering engines to standards compliant mode, some don’t, not to mention almost standard mode in Mozilla.
IE5.x, which cannot be neglected (unless you can), has no standards mode anyway, so it is up to coder to decide should s/he put the false doctype on the top of the code. It’s a lie, you know… Only some see it as the white lie, while others do not.
Coding for the quirks mode may seem easier to some,
and you will have to deal with IE box model anyhow, at least for a while.
I’d like to save standards compliant mode for the valid code, unless we are going to have some super-standards mode doctype switching for the valid code and correct MIME type.
What a mess…
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:23 PM | #
30. Thomas Baekdal said:
These comments reminds me of “Mo’ Beta Testing Blues” (Wired).
Saying that:
“If you can’t validate when you go live, why instead can’t you make it a goal to achieve valid markup over a reasonable period of time?”
Is like saying that you will release a beta version, and fix the bugs later (Microsoft Update?). Such an approach is never good.
First of all, it is possible to make a site 100% valid from the beginning. I have seen many people write perfectly standard code - e.g. creating a template that validates from the very beginning. It is all about coding practices.
Validation is the same as a quality stamp. If your site do not validate, your quality control has failed. If you say that you do not think that validation is important - you are saying that you do not care about code quality.
To give you an example: About 1-2 times each week, some web company calls me in an effort to sell me a website (either the site itself, or a CMS system). Everytime I ask them “do you have a website”, and everytime I validate their website. If it does not validate, well - then I am not going to buy anything.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:24 PM | #
31. Hayo said:
I see… what Faruk means.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:24 PM | #
32. Dave P said:
Whoa, Slow down there Mike, my disagreement is not personal, so don’t take it as such.
But I will address those points:
1. I’m sorry, but I don’t see hyperbole in your post, I see frustration and a little humour, but no hyperbole; especially since there are missing alt tags and the like in your code.
2. Sure there are spelling mistakes in my comment, I’d fix them if I could, but I don’t run this site. You’ll notice that I fix them as they are pointed out on my site. Following a standard doesn’t mean you need to be perfect, it means you recognize that it is a goal you should be working towards.
3. You’re correct, I don’t know you, which is probably why I have no qualms about calling you on your stance, since I’m not really worried if I offend you (although that’s not my intent). Really, though I’m only commenting on your published views and practices, nothing more, nothing less.
4. “I�€™m not disregarding any specs here.” Actually, you are - XHTML. That’s my point, unless of course you have no control over the actual coding of the site.
I don’t care that the site doesn’t validate because of an ampersand. What I do care is that it seems to me, from observation, that you’ve let your POV extend from ampersands to missing closing tags (on divs) to using a width tag on an image. These aren’t idealist or impossible tasks these are “spelling mistakes” and are simple corrections.
5. Presenting a POV opposite your published and practiced controversial one is harming the community? Is this what constitutes creative discussion these days? By all means continue to disagree with the W3C regarding standards and validation, but don’t negate my questioning you on your stance by crying that “I’m harming the community”. This isn’t Soviet Russia.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:27 PM | #
33. Michael Wilson said:
Hi,
I think that it has always been official that nothing less than 100% conformity to every nuance of any standard is the baseline requirement for being associated with that standard. This is true of any industry and Web Development should not be an exception—close to standard is not standard. Simply put: don’t claim to be something you are not and Mike never claimed ABC.com or the development team to be anything other than “good Web Samaritans”. Teams working towards Web Standards should be recognized and anytime a large organization such as ABC makes a push toward the ultimate goal, everyone who supports a standardized Web wins. Is the redesign of ABC.com a good thing for Web Standards? Hell yes. Is it equally important that the site has validation issues? Absolutely—those issues should be corrected and as Mike stated emphatically in his article “we’re not perfect, and secondly, we’re not done”. You can ask nothing more of an individual or an organization than to commit to continuous improvement.
Best regards,
M. Wilson
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:28 PM | #
34. Rimantas said:
Faruk,
maybe you should try to read my comments to the end and try to understand what I am saying instead of blaming me not having perspective?
All I am trying to say is: do not call an apple an orange. Apples are good and healthy too, but they are not oranges. Or maybe if apples come in a box with “ORANGES” running accross it converts them somehow?
English is not my native language, that makes it a bit difficult for me tu express myself.
Or is the perspective so we can twist standards any way that suits our laziness, incompetence, lack of interest, whatever?
I know a company what does just that.
Well, I should really to set up the blog of my own, so I quit polluting good blogs.
This is surely my last comment under this post.
I see some got ‘ad hominem’ and ‘wrong gang’ arguments handy, so this won’t take long to Godwin’s law to kick in.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:38 PM | #
35. Hayo said:
Well said Michael.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:38 PM | #
36. Jeff said:
I agree with you, on the fact that taking a step back and praising any movement towards is a step in the right direction. My personal opinion is until the browsers support XHTML + CSS Consistently people are willing and going to move only so far to the standards direction.
I am a web developer for a very large site, I try very hard to adhere to web standards. But the first tag you see inside the body is a table tag, trust me I have tried and tried and tried to come up with a layout that the customer wants without using the table tag, that will work in all browsers. The key thing is there are people in marketing, people in business, people that know nothing about HTML, XHTML, CSS and they do not care, they want it to look their way and no compromising. I can only advise them to do it right but in the end they pay the bills, I need to eat. I have seriously spent 6 weeks trying different div tags, nested div tags, various CSS configurations, nothing would render the same in both browsers to get this layout to work.
Funny thing was it was this morning I gave up, I literally turned to a coworker and said F— these web standards people. I know they are going to criticize my site even if it does validate because I am using a table to get the layout I am sitting there fuming because I know I used a table I even used CSS to set the table up. You know I don’t care anymore. I then after spending 6 weeks trying to get a layout to work, got it done with a table in 3 hours.
I finally hit my breaking point and was ready to renounce web standards completely. I was beginning to view some of the web standards enforcers as the crazed Linux guys that insist Oh yeah recompiling the kernel everyday, that’s just a part of life, it is much better than Windows or regular Unix. I really hate those guys. Well I am beginning to get the same feeling for the web standards nuts that take it too far. People that do not understand that certain things are just not practical and to criticize me for taking a step in the right direction.
Well thanks, this article make me feel a whole lot better that there are people out there that agree with me. That steps in the right direction are that, steps in the right direction, The wheel may be turning, be thankful it is turning. Practicality still isn’t there and won’t be I do not think until the browser support it.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:39 PM | #
37. Jay Jones said:
What I don’t understand is the animosity towards web standards. Not being a standards junkie doesn’t mean we should take the position that standards are unnecessary… especially when we are fully capable of developing to them.
It just turns me off to see someone take their site all the way to the brink of validation, simply because when you code correctly this is the by-product, and then purposely un-validate their code just to shove their anti-standard standard in the virtual face of the collective pro-standards community.
What kind of point is this supposed to make? I think it’s petty, really.
But, then again, there will always be those who want to go against the flow, “just because they can”. Yeah. Really cool.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:48 PM | #
38. Hayo said:
I see standards as the ultimate goal. It can be very challenging and fun to get a site to adhere, yet sometimes all kinds of circumstances make this difficult.
Surely you could always fully support standards and code everything xhtml1.1 wíth the correct media type. For a large site like abc news, this would be way to expensive in time and money.
Every step towards standards is a good one.
Posted on October 12, 2004 01:57 PM | #
39. Olly Hodgson said:
I’m in the “validation is something to work towards” camp. When working on small static sites, its very easy to achieve validation, but when you’re claning up the output of a gert big CMS from yesteryear it can be quite a big task - and you might well miss a few bit first time around.
At work we recently relaunched a couple of major sites using XHMTL and CSS - but they don’t quite validate bacause of a few issues with a XSLT component on the server side that refuses point blank to close image, br and hr tags. Grrr!
But we’re working towards fixing these issues, and we’ll validate in the next few weeks with any luck.
I’d be interested to hear if Mike D and the team are aiming to sort out the various “not quite there” validation issues with their big new sites (ABC and Movies.com), and i’ll be even more interested to see if they actully do so.
Posted on October 12, 2004 02:14 PM | #
40. Baxter said:
Anyone who thinks ANY site can validate has never seen the junk third-parties will try to stick in your pages (and therefore probably doesn’t really know what they’re talking about).
I’ve seen code from “professionals” that wouldn’t validate as 3.2 loose. Just miserable.
And sometimes, you’re forbidden to mess with it.
If Mike COULD have realistically made the ABC site compliant, don’t you think he would have? I do. As he’s said, sometimes things are beyond your control, so you do your best and keep pushing.
Really, we’re all missing the bigger picture here: as standards advocates, how do we convince our partners, vendors and other third parties to stop using craptacular code?
Posted on October 12, 2004 02:55 PM | #
41. Joel said:
I’m amazed people are still yacking on about this. Surely it’s clear: if it is in your power to make your code validate, and you don’t, then why bother even keeping up the pretence of buying into standards-compliant design? If, on the other hand, your site validates except for things out of your control, such as ads on an Atomz search page, then you’ve done the best you can.
What’s so difficult about this?
Aren’t there more interesting things to talk about?
After avoiding web design blogs for what seems a happy length of time, it feels like being dragged back into the dark ages to see the same papers being shuffled on the same agenda table.
Keith, no-one really cares whether your site validates or not except you yourself. And I suspect you do care, and would like it to validate, but the comments code makes it a hassle for you. I sympathise. Only you know how much is in your power. But it’s pointless railing against validation evangelists, because at heart you have to recognise that they’re right. All that’s at issue here is your own frustration. You care. That’s good I think.
Like your current design, by the way.
Posted on October 12, 2004 03:17 PM | #
42. Keith said:
Joel – You make a good point. It’s just a times I really feel like it is worth it to rail, if for no other reason than to let off some steam and support someone who’s work I feel is good for the Web professional community.
But your point is well taken. There are much more interesting and IMO worthwhile things to talk about.
Thanks for the comment on the design, I appreciate it.
Posted on October 12, 2004 03:25 PM | #
43. Ian Fenn said:
As I’ve written elsewhere, 100% validation is sometimes unachievable when working for a larger organisation. I’m working on a similar project to abcnews.com at the moment. I supplied a number of templates, all of which validated, but I don’t have a hope of seeing them validate in the ‘real world’. There are just too many different platforms and third parties involved and too little time. I have no doubt, however, that the website will look as it should to our wide-ranging target browser set - and surely that’s the most important thing.
I also have a problem with the attitude of validation zealots when the desire to validate actually prevents a website from looking as intended in browser clients. I learnt this the hard way, spending three days trying to get a page containing flash to both validate and work in all the browsers hosted by browsercam.com. In the end I used a JavaScript include - the page validates but the underlying code doesn’t. It does, however, display properly in the vast majority of browsers out there - and that’s what I want and my clients and their visitors need. *That* is the most important thing.
All the best,
–
Ian
Posted on October 12, 2004 03:33 PM | #
44. Vlad Alexander said:
Mike, you made some very strong statements relating to the benefits of XHTML. The real benefits of XHTML today are on the production side. It is precisely because you have a large site that you need to have validating markup. If all your content and layout templates are in XHTML, then the next time you want to re-design your site and update thousands of pages, you can use XML technologies like DOM and XSLT to update your site in days rather than months.
Posted on October 12, 2004 03:48 PM | #
45. Chris G. said:
Validation is a goal. Perfection isn’t always possible (it can even be argued that it is impossible to be perfect), as many have said. That doesn’t mean everyone stops without trying.
ABC News and its new web site should be commended for its move towards standards. It isn’t perfect, but it is darn close considering where it came from and I am sure over time it will get pretty close if not perfect.
Posted on October 12, 2004 03:51 PM | #
46. Vinnie Garcia said:
A standard is a standard is a standard. If your code doesn’t meet it, then it’s not compliant. Plain and simple.
However, people need to separate “standards” from “best practices”. Clean code doesn’t have to validate to be clean, and conversely valid code isn’t always pretty (it’s amazing what passes for XHTML 1.0 Transitional on some sites). Did Mike and his team use best practices when building abcnews.com? Yes. Is it standards-compliant? No. Pretty simple in my mind. Remember: in the “real world”, best practices will win out over lofty standards when the time and budget and marketing department won’t allow for compliance.
Finally, there are bigger things to talk about in the world of Web design, and it’s sad to see that this minutiae is taking up bytes that can be used to discuss those larger topics.
Posted on October 12, 2004 04:05 PM | #
47. Mike D. said:
Vlad,
If you think a major media site (no matter how good the code is) can be redesigned in “days rather than months”, you don’t understand what a major media site redesign really is. While a redesign for a blogger might be changing the header out and switching up the fonts, media sites require a whole lot more attention.
New ad sizes, new ad formats, new video features, new readability tools, new content feeds formatted in totally different ways. Shall I go on?
The fact is that when a major media site redesigns every X number of years, it’s a lot more than just shifting the furniture around. The most important part of your content to keep clean is what’s in the database… the raw content of a story, for instance. Having this stuff well-formed lets you plop it into whatever shell you happen to design for it… in whatever language, whether it be HTML, XHTML, RSS, etc. We’ve gone to great lengths to “clean” this source content as best we can via upgrades in our CMS and templates, but where it gets a bit messy is in the assembly of it all. We have statistical tracking code which is not valid. We have ampersand-filled ad code which is not valid. And of course we have the occasional rookie errors coming in from time to time (e.g., a stray uppercase tag, a missing trailing slash, etc). This is the stuff we are working to minimize.
And by the way, we already are using the DOM and XSLT.
Posted on October 12, 2004 04:13 PM | #
48. Isofarro said:
The redesign of ABC News is a step in the right direction. There seems to be a a consensus around that here. Well, its actually a couple of steps in the right direction - but not enough to arrive at the right destination.
Its fine to acknowledge the site for what it is - an excellent move on the road toward web standards. Great work, looks good.
Moving towards web standards is one thing. Its getting closer the destination - ABC news is tantalisingly close. But not there yet.
I’ve seen the explanation as to why full validation isn’t possible - great. Hopefully plans are in place, or will be in place to eek out those remaining obstacles. If the CMS is the cause of the problem - have the CMS vendors laid out a timetable to repair it? If the third party content is invalid, have they been talked to and encouraged to repair their markup?
Posted on October 12, 2004 04:34 PM | #
49. The Wolf said:
Websites that claim to follow the web standards must validate. Why? Because its the final check in the development of a site. Not to say the sites won’t be poorly coded and non semantic…
But any site of quality should validate as proof that they have tried their best.
Posted on October 12, 2004 05:08 PM | #
50. Luke Redpath said:
The thing that annoys me about these debates about validation is when people start throwing around statements such as:
“you MUST do this…”
“validation is easy…”
etc.
The fact is, unless you are involved on a project, you have NO IDEA why there may be certain problems. With huge corporate sites such as ABC there could be a multitude of reasons but there are always know-it-alls out there who just because they managed to get their little portfolio/blog site to validate with relative ease, that the same principle scales up to a site the size of ABC. It rarely does.
Posted on October 12, 2004 06:19 PM | #
51. Kyle said:
I haven’t got the time to go through all 50 comments right now, but I’ve read a lot of them.
In my experience, those who say “validation is my god, worship them like the devil” are ones who have never worked on a large site as part of a team.
It is impossible to standardize the way people code. Then you’ve got your whole CMS part, your whole third-party apps. It’s just not plausable. And what do you gain? Nothing.
Posted on October 12, 2004 06:52 PM | #
52. Dave P said:
Whoa Kyle:
I’m not sure what your background is, but coming from a development perspective myself I think I can safely say that is not impossible, and is in fact the norm to have standard coding practices rigourously enforced in most shops.
Web standards and validation may be open for debate, but lets not make sweeping statements that have been clearly demonstrated to be false.
Posted on October 12, 2004 08:26 PM | #
53. Kyle said:
Please name these shops, because I’d be really interested to find them. Standardized coding can be found in many Java apps, C++, etc. Not HTML. Not CSS.
I’ve talked with many people in (very) big shops, and work in one as well. The reality is deliverables are always a day too early, clients always deliver content a day too late and approve designs a week later than scheduled, but the site launch date remains the same. This leads to an overburden on the Web Producers. This in turn leads to pushing designers into producers for a few hours, and ‘just getting things done’ It would be wonderful to have excess whitespace gone, indentations consistent - but in the reality all that matters is that it works in the target browsers.
Again, I’m on Mike’s side on this one. Those who say “if I were in charge of site X then it would have perfect code” are not living in the real world and don’t have any experience whatsoever to back it up.
Now, small shops that work on less than a half a dozen sites at a time - sure, they’ve got the availibility to standardize code. Most the time it’s one person coding it, or two at the most. Most of the time these guys have known each other for a long time. They probably learn from each other and share each other’s coding styles. In those situations, it’s nice to have validating, clean code. But in real world sites? I think it’s not plausable.
Not to say validating code doesn’t have it’s place in big sites. The issue you have to remember is, the cost comes down to the client in the end. Someone has to pay for the extra labor that doesn’t return a dollar more from the site.
Posted on October 12, 2004 08:57 PM | #
54. Josh said:
It is interesting to note that Ethan’s own CSS doesn’t validate on his site: sideshow.com. There are currently two errors, so doesn’t this go directly against his statements in the article?
“I’m of the mindset that validation isn’t an ideal, it’s a necessary baseline.”
I believe the saying goes: “Put up or shut up.”
My sites don’t validate and really why should they if the site works just fine in all major browsers today and of the near future?
This is like the parent that is not happy that his son or daughter just pulled their grade up from an F to a C. “A is the baseline, nothing less will do,” they say instead of being happy in what has been improved so far.
Just my two cents on the issue.
Posted on October 12, 2004 09:15 PM | #
55. The Wolf said:
“My sites don’t validate and really why should they if the site works just fine in all major browsers today and of the near future?”
Then again why shouldn’t it? Because it takes more time? Well, how about you take the time to write quality code.
“It is interesting to note that Ethan’s own CSS doesn’t validate on his site: sideshow.com. There are currently two errors, so doesn’t this go directly against his statements in the article?”
Hmm, two errors? Oh my! I’m going to have to smack him for that one!…
There is a big difference between two errors and two hundred, I say that the only reason that there would be any errors in most peoples CSS is because they implemented a minor ‘hack’ to prevent IE from failing.
“This is like the parent that is not happy that his son or daughter just pulled their grade up from an F to a C. “A is the baseline, nothing less will do”, they say instead of being happy in what has been improved so far.”
Sure things have improved, but why not go the whole way instead of offering something that is nearly there but not quite?
“It is impossible to standardize the way people code.”
Uh… hello!? What exactly do you think the Web Standards are for? They are there as a guide for coding for the web. They are not there to be half heartedly followed, they are there to be used to YOUR advantage.
Posted on October 12, 2004 10:33 PM | #
56. Kyle said:
“Uh�€� hello!? What exactly do you think the Web Standards are for? They are there as a guide for coding for the web. They are not there to be half heartedly followed, they are there to be used to YOUR advantage.”
Please be rational. You and I both know there is a massive difference between coding standards and language standards.
For example, making navigation. You have the:
<div>Home</div>
<div>Section two</div>
and then there’s
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>Section two</li>
</ul>
Both follow the language standards but both show two different coding standards. Show me in the W3C standards how to comment. When indents are neccecary. Validation has as much to do with coding standards as it does with the language’s standards. One person may use WebCurl on a mac to fix his quotes, turning it into a &146; instead of a “ It’s much much more than simply reading the standards and coding perfect layouts.
Posted on October 12, 2004 10:45 PM | #
57. Hanni said:
I’m of the opinion that while the principles of validation are important, a couple of minor errors do not mean the end of the world. What’s important is a gradual switch towards awareness of Web Standards, why there are important and what you can do to help.
Posted on October 12, 2004 10:48 PM | #
58. Small Paul said:
In the commercial world, which is where the hard-working guys behind the ABC redesign are placed (like anyone else who gets paid for all this), everything is cost/benefit based.
In the commercial world, often people working on a site have no control over large parts of it. Just as Mike says:
What, should he go round to every organisation that contributes content to ABC News, and fix all their processes and software to produce valid code?
If anyone can show an actual problem caused by any validation errors, then the ABC team can evaulate the seriousness of the problem, and decide whether a fix is worthwhile.
In the meantime, they’ve provided another very high profile example of how well-designed client-side code can provide large cost savings and easier maintenance. Good show.
And another thing (sorry, I’m getting just as het up as everyone else, didn’t mean to) - if you don’t serve XHTML with the correct MIME type, it’s not XHTML either, whilst if you do, it breaks IE6.
In my terribly humble opinion, a) XHTML currently provides small, rare actual benefits, and b) it’s really not that hard to convert good HTML to XHTML in the future. There will be tools that do a good job for you.
Posted on October 13, 2004 01:07 AM | #
59. Faruk Ates said:
The Wolf said:
Because nearly ALL companies that are paying you to make them a website don’t care whether you go all the way or not, but they do care how much money you are costing them. Going all the way is money spent on something they don’t care for, but something YOU care for. Ergo, it’s money that THEY won’t spend on you, and thus YOU don’t have the option to go all the way.
It’s a great achievement that in today’s world we can at least go halfway in the road to Standards compliance. It sure as hell beats not going at all.
Adhering to Standards 50% with an invalid XHTML site is still better than not adhering to Standards at all, or using an HTML site. HTML sites are the bomb underneath our fortress of Web Standards, the more [HTML sites] you add [to the web] the bigger their threat.
Posted on October 13, 2004 03:11 AM | #
60. Mike said:
I try to have every page I create validate 100% XHTML; I try to use ascii codes and entities when they’re needed.
But, I don’t obsess if that don’t happen. Every designer is not going to instantly create valid XHTML, semantic markup overnight. Taking steps in the right direction is the correct thing instead of having designers you are used to and just embracing web standards jumping right in and having those designers get more and more frustrated when their page don’t validate because of an unescaped ampersand.
Faruk Ates said:
As this is true, the problem is that many web server administrators do not have their servers set up to serve their XHTML pages as application/xhtml+xml and still serve them as text/html for backward compatibility.
Posted on October 13, 2004 05:51 AM | #
61. Zbigniew said:
Hey, question was not “should our pages validate”, it was “does a page need to validate to be standards compliant”.
And answer is - Yes, it does.
Posted on October 13, 2004 06:00 AM | #
62. Tom said:
Having read a few comments, it seems that we need to look at the difference between ‘standards-based’ and ‘standards-compliant’. I’m out of the loop a bit I and my site’s looking decidedly old-fashionedly-coded, serving up XHTML 1.0 Trans via text/html. Focusing on PHP and college work leaves little time for matters of such little importance as which doctype I’m using!
To me, ‘standards-based’ gives the impression that whoever designed the site is moving it in the right direction. ‘Standards-compliant’, on the other hand, shows me that the designer is really focused on the standards issue and therefore deserves praising. Web standards are given so much publicity these days (maybe it’s just the stuff I read?) and so many people seem able to get away with saying their sites conform to current web standards when in fact they haven’t got there yet.
Another thing which seems to cause confusion is coding styles, the most obvious of which being tables vs. DIVs. To me, using tables is a total no-go area, unless in certain cases where I have hundreds of things to do all crushed into one miniscule amount of time. If these tables are public, they’re there for as small an amount of time as possible. Basically, when I see a site that validates but uses primarily tables for layout, its status in my head immediately switches from ‘standards-compliant’ to ‘standards-based’.
I think I agree with the comments saying that the WaSP (and some of the community) need to accept that the switch to wholly standards-compliant destinations will, in many cases, be a gradual process, not a sudden leap. Especially on sites with many contributors, systems need to be developed and training done to ensure that sites stay standards-compliant.
Maybe I should start writing more on this subject…
Posted on October 13, 2004 06:09 AM | #
63. Vinnie Garcia said:
That’s not a coding problem. That’s a project management/client management problem. If a client deliverable is late then the whole project should be realigned. In your case it’s an external force leading to a rush job, which is never ideal and usually can be fixed, though it may not be easy.Posted on October 13, 2004 06:19 AM | #
64. Henrik Lied said:
Validation is just a small process when discussing Web standards.
The “real deal” behind standards is Semantics and structure, and that’s what a lot of people struggle with in the beginning.
Validation isn’t that important to me, and I must say that Mike’s post about validation was quite facinating.
When XHTML is an issue, a lot of people use it, but only a small part of those think about XHTML MIME-types, and as far as I’m concerned, using the correct MIME-type (application/xhtml+xml) is just as important as validation.
Really, what use do one have of XHTML, when it is not used correctly?
It almost becomes un-semantically.
Just had to get that off my chest.
Excellent discussion, Keith!
Posted on October 13, 2004 06:46 AM | #
65. Ryan Christie said:
You’re right Keith; any step in the right direction should be applauded. Where I think both sides fall short is that applause for substandard work won’t encourage struggling standards developers to go an extra mile and achieve validation. While I’ll recognize it as a vital part of a multi-step process of getting to validity, it’s still not valid. And my answer to if validation is important is yes. Very important. I’ve spent a long time on trying to get from partial to full validation without limiting what I can do.
If a page doesn’t validate but is clearly trying to be valid, it’s simply not standard. A standard page should be valid x/HTML/CSS. And, gee, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all do a half-ass job on our PHP and have whatever broken, nasty objects that managed to get computed print out. No, you get an error page.
Just because in the 90’s browser makers wanted to make web coding accessible for idiots thereby destroying the necessity (practical necessity mind you) of coding to a standard doesn’t mean that now in 2004 we can’t look back at the mistakes and say they were wrong and demand more out of ourselves and others.
Languages like C++, PHP, and VB spit out errors left and right. They tell you to go home, learn how to code correctly, and try again. The only reason HTML doesn’t behave the same way “higher” languages do is because it was bastardized to allow anyone to use it, and browsers were made to interpret, not follow orders. This laxity was set in place (purposefully I’d believe) to encourage the growth of the web when it was brand new. Well, the web isn’t brand new anymore. The damage that has been done by such carelessness is basically irreversible.
Part of this shift towards doing things the right way is the natural maturation of new technology. Those of us who can do sites like ESPN and ABC News in 100% standard, valid, compliant code are the ones driving the web forward. We pave the way for corporations like ESPN and ABC to attempt what they attempt. We call the shots and formulate workarounds. We pester browser makers to make better browsers. We push standards to death in order to get it recognized as just an “ideal”. Without us, the internet would be stuck in some Medieval time period of stagnancy.
In closing,
my nephew came to me with some math homework and asked if I could check over the work he had done. Out of 15 problems, he had solved 11 of them successfully and 4 of them were wrong. I didn’t hand the paper back to my nephew telling him he was an idiot and should forget about learning math because he couldn’t do it the right way. I circled the problems he did incorrectly and told him to try those 4 again. When he couldn’t figure them out on his own and returned to me asking for explanation, I sat down and went over 2 of them at length with him. After understanding the right way, he did the last remaining two effortlessly.
Encouragement, not insults people. We can’t all be professionals at standard development. Now that’s an ideal.
Posted on October 13, 2004 06:48 AM | #
66. Ray said:
A clear and emphatic yes from this corner.
I hereby enforce Godwin’s Law: Hitler “thought” he cared about standards.
Meh
Posted on October 13, 2004 07:25 AM | #
67. Faruk Ates said:
Mike said:
True; I’m used to working with sites that have dynamic pages and are thus generated via a coding language like PHP. In such cases, you can just add the right headers yourself to the browsers that support them.
Posted on October 13, 2004 07:28 AM | #
68. Ethan said:
Regarding the validation errors in my site’s CSS, this is a known bug in the validator.
Posted on October 13, 2004 07:30 AM | #
69. Michael Wilson said:
Hi,
Kyle said:
“Please be rational. You and I both know there is a massive difference between coding standards and language standards.”
“It’s much much more than simply reading the standards and coding perfect layouts.”
I don’t mean to pick specifically on you Kyle, but I think it needs to be pointed out that you are loosely comparing standards to best practices and the problems you point out are largely internalization issues. It is up to your organization to develop coding guidelines and best practices to ensure your markup is regulated. You seem to think it is impossible for a large organization to monitor the coding process, but it’s not. I’m in the process of developing such a guide that details when to use a list, how to structure the source code, commenting guidelines, and too much more to list here. When implemented, every line of code coming from one of my teams will conform to this internal standard. You can’t shift the responsibility of producing valid, semantic documents to the W3C or anyone else—it’s up to you to standardize your organization and validation is just one step in the process.
Best regards,
Michael Wilson
Posted on October 13, 2004 07:39 AM | #
70. Steven Woods said:
Most of my opinion is in the comments of others, but in summary:
* Only real-world developers are fit to comment on this issue IMHO. They sometimes face impossible deadlines which means they can’t always get things laying out ‘perfectly’ (but the site can still validate).
* <table> is a valid tag.
* CSS based design != compliance.
Thanks for the article, Keith.
Posted on October 13, 2004 08:00 AM | #
71. Josh said:
Ethan -
I had not heard about that bug. Sorry about that.
Posted on October 13, 2004 08:05 AM | #
72. Keith H. said:
I think this whole thing is getting blown out of proportion. As I recall from his post, Mike stated that they were aware of the ampersand issue and planning on correcting the problem (He also said he only had a consultative role and that the New York office was largely responsible for the effort). In addition, the jist of the article was the move towards css and web standards. Zealot or not, the fact that large corporations are taking notice of the standards movement is a good thing for the industry, for developers/designers and for the companies that move in that direction.
Posted on October 13, 2004 08:34 AM | #
73. Keith said:
I think this has gotten a bit off track, so I think it’s time to shut down the comments on this one. I don’t want to cut anyone off, but the noise level is getting pretty high.
I’m sure Mike cares about his validation errors but he has more than enough to worry about. I mean on a project of this size you’ve got to deal with internal stakeholders, distributed teams, 3rd parties and more.
Let alone having to address people in the Web community who fail to see the bigger picture and concentrate on your shortcomings instead of praising the good work you’re doing.
I feel it’s ok to mention these things and talk about them and I recognize that validation is important. I just wish people would recognize that when a large corporate site (Which frankly has much bigger fish to fry than Web standards. Period.) like ABC News makes even the slightest move toward Web standards it should be hailed as a victory for standards and nothing less.
How’s that for all or nothing? ;) Peace.
Posted on October 13, 2004 10:03 AM | #
Comments are now closed