We're saying that you should know what it means, how to achieve it, and
make conscious decisions on whether to use invalid code or not.
I'm not sure who "we" is. And I don't recall making any statement other than
the observation I posted. I was not disagreeing (or agreeing) with anyone.
But as long as I'm being addressed about this, I might as well make a few
comments.
I believe in standards, and I am happy about the recent trend in the
industry to accept and adhere to the standards that do exist. This will mean
that HTML and web application development will become much easier for those
of us "in the trenches." I believe that, as much as possible, a good
developer should adhere to these standards. As has been pointed out, it
results in better cross-browser compatibility, and less future maintenance
of code written.
That said, we are emerging from a history that has been chaotic at best,
with regards to web development. When HTML was first created, there were no
standards. When HTML was first extended, there were no standards. When
JavaScript was developed, there were no standards. The W3C has had quite a
job on their hands coming up with standards over the years. And they are
admittedly not quite finished, in terms of, for example, the integration of
EcmaScript (JavaScript) into the HTML Document Object Model.
This means that certain things simply cannot be done without exceeding the
existing standards. However, in the post-browser-war era, the vendors have
been very cooperative with one another, and there are many things not in the
standards (yet) that the browser vendors have agreed upon. This is
particularly true in the area of EcmaScript and the DOM. There are many
things which are not standard, but work equally well in IE as well as the
Mozilla family of browsers (FireFox, Netscape, etc).
The result of this is that, if one wants to do certain things in an HTML
document or web application, one must use code which is not included in any
W3C standards. It is likely, however, that, being agreed upon by the
vendors, it will be adopted into the standards at some future point.
Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that, while knowing the standards is
very important, adhering to them (including passing a validation test) is
not as important, and sometimes, not important at all.
BTW, Patty,
http://www.webdevbiz.com/ comes up with 27 errors, and
http://www.thepattysite.com/ comes up with 2. ;-)
--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
You can lead a fish to a bicycle,
but it takes a very long time,
and the bicycle has to *want* to change.
