How important is it to be w3 standard compliant?

**kristeejo** · 12-04-2007, 10:19 AM

Do you guys pay much attention to this? I've found that if I do, site look like crap....how much weight does this really hold?

Costin Trifan · 12-04-2007, 01:18 PM

which is better: a table or a div?

My first choice will be a table, then a div. But you see, a lot of other people will disagree with me here.

The same about with beeing w3c standard compliant. Some are obsessed about this aspect others are not...

My personal opinion regarding this subject is to be like a snake... Use everything to make your website look good in IE, FF, NS, Opera without thinking about w3c. When your work is done, see if your pages validate against w3c. If they don't (and when we talk about a dynamic website or an e-commerce website - they, in most of the cases, don't validate) then, don't worry about that (because your website will be displayed just fine in most of the browsers), but if they do, you can give yourself a pat on your shoulder

So, you see, w3c is trying to do something good here, but it's not always up to us to follow its standards...the giants (MS, Apple etc...) should start following and implementing those standards so we (developers, designers) should not be forced to use so many hacks just to have a page displayed aprox. the same in IE6, IE7 on XP & Vista and IE5 on MAC (try it with a heavy tableless page, you'll see what I mean

) .

**kristeejo** · 12-04-2007, 01:23 PM

oh how I know exactly what you mean. I've recently have someone come down hard on some of my sites because they aren't compliant. much of the page is dynamic and for it to be a happy compliant site, dear god - i dunno

Costin Trifan · 12-04-2007, 01:34 PM

Can you make yesterday again? ask them that!

There are ways to go to make a website more friendly, but not always they lead to success...

Let's say you have a client that wants an unobtrusive website, and you're using asp.net technology. So far so good. Until you start using some controls such is the Calendar control. Well, when the page is requested by a user, that Calendar control will be displayed as a table using a lot of inline styling...
Is your page still unobtrusive? No, of course not! well, so far so bad. What's next? --> lots and lots of hacks just to make happy a client that doesn't understands how the web technologies work... <-- and this is madness...

**kristeejo** · 12-04-2007, 01:50 PM

that's funny you mention that - a calendar control is one of the problems. the entire site is in .NET and dude is giving me a hard time about blind people.

Costin Trifan · 12-04-2007, 01:57 PM

well...you know you can't please everybody...

what is the problem you have with that control?

**kristeejo** · 12-04-2007, 01:59 PM

i guess blind people can't see it well. ; )

Costin Trifan · 12-04-2007, 02:28 PM

oohh boy...

http://www.daveandal.net/articles/v2...provements.htm

There's a lot of interesting info there regardind the accesibility (also, a lot of text, so if you like to read...)

Boogle · 12-05-2007, 03:46 AM

my

here: how many sites do you think conform fully to the W3C standards with AAA ratings for accessibility to sites for disabled people? It's a tough ask if you are wanting any kind of above-average-looking site!

Tomassi · 12-05-2007, 05:22 AM

I try to make it as compliant as possible, but I'm not going to bother with it if it's gonna take more time than it's worth