Do you Validate Your Markup?

[Kalina]

GeorgeB, you didn't mean to offend but calling those of us who care about standards and accessiblity, snobs, is offensive.

I don't care for the sake of design, I care for the disabled, I care to make their lives a little damn easier. Snob? I think not. We have to consider everyone, not just ourselves, should the day come you lose your eyesight or anything else that makes your life a little harder, I should hope someone cares enough to help.

It doesn't matter so much to me if my site looks good on some "snobs" PDA... it matters to me that a disabled person can at least get around to the best of their ability, I will do what I can to make their lives easier, at least then I can sleep better at night knowing I did my share.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

I'll be the first to admit I have my fields of expertise and web standards isn't one of them so there are probably a few underlying points I'm totally missing. But from my perspective, things are working fine now and (on the webmaster side) web standards will only help designers. Not the rest of us.

"web standards will only help designers" you really need to read up what standards are all about, it's to be sure a website is functional cross-platform, cross-browser, for special devices such a screen readers. We're making sure a website is accessible for everyone.

That's such a bad thing?

I know as far as I am concerned, it doesn't help me at all, except that I did the right thing.

[John Scott]

*Group hug*

[GeorgeB]

GeorgeB, you didn't mean to offend but calling those of us who care about standards and accessiblity, snobs, is offensive.

Word... You are right. I take that back.

If accessibility for disabled folks is your primary concern I can't find a single argument against that in my tiny brain.

But admit with me... "some" designers are snobs? I mean you should go over to sitepoint and just follow a few of the highly regarded members over there around. Their asses get kissed so much and there are so many people over there who think their designs are touched by the one above. I guess that's really where I get the snob impression from. My bad for stereotyping...

But I know there are some designers out there who are not only extremely talented but cool people as well. In fact you are just a nice person all around.

[Kalina]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Word... You are right. I take that back.

If accessibility for disabled folks is your primary concern I can't find a single argument against that in my tiny brain.

But admit with me... "some" designers are snobs? I mean you should go over to sitepoint and just follow a few of the highly regarded members over there around. Their asses get kissed so much and there are so many people over there who think their designs are touched by the one above. I guess that's really where I get the snob impression from.

But I know there are some designers out there who are not only extremely talented but cool people as well. In fact you are just a nice person all around.

Yes, some are. As with any profession, you'll find snobs, I am sure one of the guys who cleans up elephant **** at the zoo could be a snob.

I just care to better the lives of people if/when I can.

Thanks, George.

[Johan007]

Originally Posted by jjmac

I generally use XHTML 1.0 strict in my designs...

I used too use XHTML but unless its served with application/xhtml+xml header there is no point in doing so (I presume you are serving it as text/html like in my portfolio link).

The best Doc Type to use HTML 4.01 Strict and I guess I will be doing so from now on.

[LazyJim]

I've had enough of this "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" arguments!
Firstly: with that attitude how is the web ever going to evolve?
Secondly: it is broke!

GeorgeB - your comments about elitism and shunning out the little new people ("high school web designers")... are simply uneducated! Sorry but this is how I feel. Please don't take this personally because I value your participation in these discussions and have for a long time been interested in rectifying the current situation of uneducated "web designers" and other web related people.

Here's my conspiracy theory, read if you care...
Not to knock people who design for a living but... I think a huge reason and source of a lot of the money behind pushing web standards is that once you make it so valid code becomes important to all webmasters and SEOs (which i'm sorry but right now, it's not) you eliminate a HUGE chunk of competition for you as a designer.

Think about it... designers lose thousands (millions?) per year to high school kids with a little creative juice who can code well enough to make a site look good in most browsers. If you make it so they have to use valid code a lot of smalltime designers or designers that build sites for a hobby won't be able to do it themselves anymore.

Why should such people be unable to compete in a web standards environment?
Once web standards are more evolved and supported by browsers, budding young web designers/developers will not have to learn all the quirks of individual browsers, and just learn the one "correct" way to code.

If anything web standards strive to level the playing field and make everyones' lives easier. At the same time a professional quality standard is available as a target for web designers and as a gauge from the customer's perspective - every industry has "best practises" and professional standards so why should "web design" be any different (really talking about paid jobs here).

Furthermore, self-built hobby sites made by non- "web designers" will eventually come to be better coded and easier to produce. Not just because of the reduced learning difficulty as mentioned above, but think how many "hobby sites" are built with Microsoft Frontpage (and other similar products)... Now imagine if Frontpage produced quality clean standards compliant code! - Web standards makes it far easier to make visual web page editors that work. It's all about interoperability / portability and efficiency of software and work-flows.

The proof is out there! Although as of right now, I think we have a long way to go till many of these "dreams" become reality, but we are already making great progress - just look at blogging and the tools available. Now the average web user can have a well coded standards based web site (blog) and apply a range of ready made styles / "skins". They can integrate their photo albums (for example) from other web sites and always have the option of "getting their hands dirty" if they are interested in taking it further or need more power/control over their web site - and all with the support of their peers (and those that have already gained new skills in the area) who all help each other and share information online.

That's just one example of success by web standards, now here's one of failure by lack thereof. Variable opacity PNG images. Work like a dream come true for web designers and would be ubiquitous now but for one thing holding them back: Microsoft Internet Explorer does not support the PNG standard. MSIE turns our sexy variable transparency special-FX (whether subtle or flamboyant) into ugly grey lumps! Not only that but IE has the technology, it is capable of displaying these variable opacity PNG's correctly but only when you use MSIE propriety code that is awkward and less powerful / flexible than the standard methods.

Hope for the future!
IE7 supports variable opacity PNG images right now, assuming the final release will keep proper support, then consider the PNG flood-gates open!

Just to finish off, imagine what standards could do for typography (font faces and their many technical bits) on the web. Ask any designer involved with print design industry how frustrating web design can be with a crippling lack of control over web site typography. There are two things stopping better control: standardisation both of the code and technology; and legal issues. Both will (hopefully) be resolved only by communication between organisations (stakeholders, software developers and industry regulators) and eventual agreement on standards.

I know this is stretching the thread topic of validators to the underlying principles of standardisation, but hopefully I have helped you and others to see that standards are good not evil!


P.S. Sorry for the long essay!

P.P.S. Don't try and validate my company web page!

[Kalina]

Great post, LazyJim!

[GeorgeB]

Im too lazy to read through all that right now.

... I'll get back to you.

[LazyJim]

Originally Posted by Colleen

Great post, LazyJim!

thanks

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Im too lazy to read through all that right now.

... I'll get back to you.

It's worth the read

[GeorgeB]

OK I read through it and I have to tell you, you make some interesting and compelling arguments. Because as you say I'm "uneducated" on this matter I can't really pose a viable argument against any of your points.... save one.

(Note: I didn't take it personally, when you're right you're right. I'm no designer )

The "reducing learning difficulty" point. How can you proclaim that making a system more complex will make it easier to learn? I gotta tell ya... right now... it's pretty darn easy

You see I know standards. Not the type of standards we're discussing here but telecommunications networks protocols and standards. It's my job and the reason they pay me so much is because it's complicated as hell! Constantly new ones coming out damn near monthly. Because telecommunications standards are so complex it is far beyond the average hobbyist tinkerer to fully grasp and understand to be able to build a truly scalable and secure neighborhood network for example. Hence they have to pay telco providers to provide this service for them. Im going off on a tangent but hopefully you get my analogy.

This is what I feel will happen with web standards. We'll move to making them mandatory then once the net is at the mercy of the W3C they'll start releasing newer and more complex standards and protocols and the war will begin.

Now about elitists and shunning being uneducated. What's funny is that's the only part of my statement that wasn't! There IS a sense of elitism and so much better than thou attitude among PRO web designers. In fact as Coleen put it you'll find that in ANY profession, so claiming there isn't is simply absurd. Now you may be just in your position but I assure you for every designer out there with a truly good intentioned vision for the future of the web there are hundreds, nay, likely thousands who are just out there to make as much money as they can. If that means getting behind standards that will cut out the low level competition so be it.

In other words... maybe not you... but the point of my conspiracy theory post was that a lot of people pushing the standards wagon have motives other than the better good of the web.

[GeorgeB]

Also, we're kinda getting off the point of this thread which is should you validate now for better serps..

I posted this:

My problem with that quote is that everyone in this thread kinda glossed over the blazingly obvious irony that if you do a google search on a few high paying competitive keywords I've got $$ that says the majority of the top resulting pages wont validate.... Until you can explain that away the whole valid code = better serps argument wont fly with me.

Not to mention what was also mentioned in this thread. The serps sites themselves dont even validate!

Would like to hear thoughts on that as well.

- G Beezy

[jjmac]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

The "reducing learning difficulty" point. How can you proclaim that making a system more complex will make it easier to learn? I gotta tell ya... right now... it's pretty darn easy

Web standards are actually less complex. The problem comes in because people are used to doing things the way they've always done them. If a person who has never coded before had a class over doing it the old way, and one over doing it standards compliant, they would surley choose the standards compliant way because it is SO much easier.

To prove this, go to a page which is layed out with tables and doesnt care about standars compliance and view the source. Try to follow it. Now go to my portfolio page and view the source. See the difference? Standards compliant code is MUCH easier not only to write, but to read by other people and by web technologies.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Would like to hear thoughts on that as well.
- G Beezy

This is a relativly easy question. Standards based coding is relatively new. It takes any person no matter what profession a while to learn new technologies that evolve. It is much easier to write a new standards based page from scratch than it is to convert an non-standards compliant page to standards. In my particular case, every page that I wrote before I learned to code with standards, do not validate. Every page I wrote after do validate. I constantly have web designs that I'm working on and I don't have time to convert the old ones at the momment -- and the clients don't always want to pay to have the page updated due highly to the mentality that is spreading here. I'm sure plenty of other designers fall into the same category I do.

What I don't like about this argument is that one of the basis for arguing is "I can't see a difference, so there must not be one."

Who would complain if someone invented a better concrete that was stronger and cheaper? Everyone can understand that. The buildings would look the same still, but I doubt you'd hear the same argument you hear in this thread.

This is because too many people don't understand the technicalties behind the benefits of valid code. These people probably don't understand the full weight of these things. Here's just a few:

Valid code is based on XML-like technology, and can actually use XML now. Did you know that the new file system MS puts out will be based on XML? Think of the data integration, files on your system could be a web page just as easily as they could be secure. All data systems are integrating with XML now, think of the possibilities of searching data, MUCH more accurate results in much less time. I'd say this alone fits the "stronger, harder concrete" argument, but lets look at some more.

Seperating design from content. There's an idea! Standards compliant page does this. What does this mean? It means that my content can show up however I want on any medium, regardless of how it's coded. I can have my page show up a certain way on a monitor, but when the page is printed it looks completely different, such as removing the bulky internet headers and menu's to where all you have is plain, readable text. The content can be styled for devices such as cell phones and PDA's with no extra overhead to the server or the web page. There many many devices that can recieve custom layout information all for the simple fact that the design is seperated from the content. I do this on many pages now, especially for print and PDA.

And of course there is the accessibility advantages. People on specialized equipment such as computers with accessibility options turned on for people with problems seeing, can customize the content however THEY need it, not how the designer feels they need it. Complete control is given to the end-user and not some designer with tripple 26 inch monitors (oh yeah, i've got 3...lol) You can actually go to any standards compliant page and create your own style for that page if you have the gumption to do so, and make the page look however you want.

Think of the possibilites! Filters for children that automatically restrict all adult content while rendering the rest of the page, colorblind templates to change colors that could possibly be a problem to better combinations, search engines that pull all relavant information from thousands of different pages to customize a page specifically for one search result, anything is possible.

Is it feeling harder and stronger now? There's even more technicalities I can get into, but believe me valid code is worth it.

I do appreciate the fact that you're not just agreeing with developers without knowing why. But you really do need to do some homework before using the "I can't see it so it's not there" argument.

[GeorgeB]

Who would complain if someone invented a better concrete that was stronger and cheaper? Everyone can understand that. The buildings would look the same still, but I doubt you'd hear the same argument you hear in this thread.

Apples and oranges. If it's stronger and cheaper then there's your proof that it's better!..... My argument is that there is no proof, SEO wise, that standards compliant code is better for SE placement. There does however seem to be proof that it doesn't hurt BUT isn't necessary yet for strong SE placement. Even scalability/speed.... go and try and validate the top 20 Alexa traffic sites.

I do appreciate the fact that you're not just agreeing with developers without knowing why. But you really do need to do some homework before using the "I can't see it so it's not there" argument.

The above quote of what I said was my homework and you don't appear to have addressed it other than saying well it's "relatively new". Well that's my point. It doesn't affect SE rankings. To say it does you'd have to go show me your homework.

"I can't see it so it's not there"

When/where did I say something to that affect?

But just to be argumentative I'll counter with this... sometimes when you can't see something, it's because it's not there.

[jjmac]

Did you read the rest of my post? Standards compliant code was not made to get a better search engine ranking. It was made to make data easier to control, share, display, and search.

All the valid code in the world cannot compete with millions of dollars worth of advertising. Talk about apples and oranges.

[LazyJim]

Thanks for highligting a few of the broader technical benifits jjmac.

I think as GeorgeB said, we are too off-topic now.
Please do continue discussion on the following newly created thread: "Web Standards discussion"

[Kalina]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Also, we're kinda getting off the point of this thread which is should you validate now for better serps..

I posted this:

Would like to hear thoughts on that as well.

- G Beezy

I started this thread and my point wasn't to validate for better serps, I don't think I stated that either. There's a combination of reasons to validate your markup.

[GeorgeB]

This is a relativly easy question. Standards based coding is relatively new. It takes any person no matter what profession a while to learn new technologies that evolve. It is much easier to write a new standards based page from scratch than it is to convert an non-standards compliant page to standards. In my particular case, every page that I wrote before I learned to code with standards, do not validate. Every page I wrote after do validate. I constantly have web designs that I'm working on and I don't have time to convert the old ones at the momment -- and the clients don't always want to pay to have the page updated due highly to the mentality that is spreading here. I'm sure plenty of other designers fall into the same category I do.

That paragraph deserves a whole new post in itself. In that paragraph you attempt to address my conclusion that because top ranking sites don't appear to need even remotely validated code to achieve #1 spots in Google, valid code is not necessary. The first bolded sentence addresses that point then you go off on a different tangent about individuals learning valid coding practices which has nothing to do with backing up your opening sentence in the paragraph. (sorry having college english flashbacks).

It takes any person no matter what profession a while to learn new technologies that evolve.

Even Google and all the other major SEs? That's why valid code doesn't affect rankings? Because they haven't learned it yet?

-- and the clients don't always want to pay to have the page updated due highly to the mentality that is spreading here. I'm sure plenty of other designers fall into the same category I do.

Ahh, back to my money point. That's what I'm getting at when I say a lot of designers only care because they know they can charge more for validated code so of course they want people to think it's important. (not saying you.. just stating my point).

Perhaps they don't want to pay because they realize that from a business standpoint it makes no sense to expend the extra budget on it because:

A) The site works and functions in most browsers.
B) It wont have any affect on their SE rankings.

Now I know you're going to argue that, "well they just don't understand that in the future they'll have to make it compliant". But... we're back to my point... why will they have to? because designers are pushing for standards... vicious circle.

Let me know when this debate becomes more annoying than fun. I'll stop.

[jjmac]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

That paragraph deserves a whole new post in itself. In that paragraph you attempt to address my conclusion that because top ranking sites don't appear to need even remotely validated code to achieve #1 spots in Google, valid code is not necessary.

Actually, I was addressing this: "Not to mention what was also mentioned in this thread. The serps sites themselves dont even validate!" which is what I thought your comment was on. Sorry not to make that clear.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Ahh, back to my money point. That's what I'm getting at when I say a lot of designers only care because they know they can charge more for validated code so of course they want people to think it's important. (not saying you.. just stating my point).

Valid code is not a magic spell, but it helps. Take two identical pages, one coded with tables and font tags the other with css and divs, then you're comparing apples with apples. Look at the SEO contests, the top pages in general are valid, or mostly valid, there's a reason for that.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Perhaps they don't want to pay because they realize that from a business standpoint it makes no sense to expend the extra budget on it because:

A) The site works and functions in most browsers.
B) It wont have any affect on their SE rankings.

Now I know you're going to argue that, "well they just don't understand that in the future they'll have to make it compliant". But... we're back to my point... why will they have to? because designers are pushing for standards... vicious circle.

It does in fact help SE rankings, when you compare two sites of the same quality of content, with the same advertising budget. Again it's not magic, but it is definitely part of the optimization process. (i'm not a mechanic so please dont bash me if the following analogy is not accurate) It's like putting a new fuel filter on your car to gain a few extra HP. It also helps people find your information. In a search listing if your page is coded with tables your content can show up disseperate. With CSS it shows up nicely together and coherent.

I guess it comes down to this: If more accessibility to more customers, display to many more media types, some search engine benefits, cheaper web pages (that's right, it's easier and faster to people who know how to do it), and quicker data access is not enough to convince you, then by all means do not switch, valid code is not for you.

[LazyJim]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Also, we're kinda getting off the point of this thread which is should you validate now for better serps..

Maybe the world revolves around serps... (heck!) but the point of this thread was totally not specific to serps or search engines!

Granted they are relevant so...

As you said, maybe some people here shouldn't have said valid code increases serps when they are unlikely to be in a position to know this for sure.

However this is still a shortsighted argument so allow me to lend you my spectacles...

• There are vastly more applications to valid code than search engines.
• Vastly more benefits to valid code will apply outside the most common hobbyist web sites.
• Vastly more benefits will be seen in the future when valid code enables new technologies both "in the works" now and those that we can't even imagine.

Seeing as you seem infatuated with serps (a bit like we seem infatuated with standards ) then...

If the search engine robots need to evaluate a page it will be easier to read it when it is created with valid standards code.

I don't think it will affect the serps much an SE is interested in relevant results - and would probably not want to exclude anything due to invalid markup.

However this does not mean some resources are accidentally missed or not read properly by search engines and therefore can't be evaluated properly. I cannot say this for sure, but equally you cannot say the opposite without any doubt, but this is the point - nobody knows if a search engine finds everything it would like to and this is a results from lack of organisation (amongst other things). Validating code is a small part of adding organisation to the web and I would have thought the benefits of that are clear.


Also in the future the search engines could, if they felt like promoting valid code, implement a filter or weighting system in favour of valid markup. Such a filter could also be added as an end-user option ("only show valid markup results" or "only show results that will work in my browser"). Although I do think this might be a bit too far fetched!

[GeorgeB]

Considering the rest of your argument seems valid, and this particular statement....

Originally Posted by LazyJim

Also in the future the search engines could, if they felt like promoting valid code, implement a filter or weighting system in favour of valid markup. Such a filter could also be added as an end-user option ("only show valid markup results" or "only show results that will work in my browser"). Although I do think this might be a bit too far fetched!

On that day, or the day web browsers stop displaying all invalid markup properly. I will start paying designers top dollar for code just because it validates.