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Does validation matter?
Published: September 21, 2006
After reading Robert Nymans' article, the web standards war is far from over, it got me thinking about Andy Budds' write up from the Web Standards Group lecture, the war is over. In the world of bitesize, headline information, mixed messages are being thrown about the growing DIY web community.
Does validation matter?
Yes.
Why?
Websites must be good looking, easy to use, informative and reach their intended market. Validation ensures that you get the best platform with which to work to these goals. Let's break it down.
Good looking
When designing a website we use the right tools for the job, valid HTML and CSS. This ensures that we get a consistent design across the browsers and devices. Coding CSS to be consistent is a very time consuming process when the structure of the site is complex. The single most effective time saving method you can employ is HTML and CSS validation.
Easy to use
Validation ensures that websites are easy to use because we can successfully omit errors from our code. Every time an error occurs in the document, user agents such as browsers and search engines have to figure this error out to determine what they need to do to effectively understand the document. This may give unstable results as every interpretation of an error is different. Validation gives back stability which makes the site easier to use on a wider variety of devices, platforms and browsers.
Informative
How does validation affect the content? Well, it's about consumption. An invalid document is not necessarily accessible to everyone so information on the page may not be read. Simple really.
Reaching the intended market
Ahh, the age old debate 'does validation affect rank'. Well from experience, no. What does affect rank though is document structure and quality. You only get good structure and quality from writing a semantically correct, information rich and validated web page.
In the beginning, there was validation.
A validated website is the absolute foundation of building any internet resource but it's the beginning of a very long journey and this is where web standards form the next level of document quality. Standards evolve too, so do users, which means the journey never ends. You're on a merry-go-round that doesn't stop and if you bail out, be prepared to be left behind.
I agree with what you say but I tend to think that there will always be a mixed bag of web sites out there. Mainly because of the ubiquity of websites and their diverse sources. I was at the Andy Budd presentation and I can see it from his 'perspective - but I wouldn't agree totally that the 'war' is over.
Sure, in some circles, web standards are taken as read and there are more and more websites that follow this 'approach'. On the other hand, there are even more websites maintained by non-technical authors with non-standards-based tools. And an equally large number of small business websites that were created a few years ago (I put my hand up to some of these) but need 'modernising' with web standards.
In the latter case, in an ideal world I would persuade all my clients to redesign or modernise following recent standards. This rarely happens unless the client wants a complete redesign, even if some of the benefits are explained.