Why validate

Hey David,

You have opened a can of worms here, haven't you :)

I actually stood, right there in your position, at about  october of 2003

saying, why on earth should i validate?! no one else does, and no-one else cares, and why should i?
everyone looks at website through IE (well at least the majority of people)


Soooo..why?

Well, I cant give you the official reason, maybe someone from the W3C can give you that but i can give you my reasons,
maybe they will answer your question.

*I love quality - quality work, quality products, If i build to standards, I can say I have built my clients 
(and myself) a quality website (as far as coding is concerned).

*It is sooooooo much easier(in some respects) to build a website when building to standards.

* my original website for pwp was over 1000 lines long before i used standards, I reduced that to just under 100 lines when i finished 
(after a long and lengthy fight with the validator who was right in the first place and I who came off second best)

* the speed of my websites downloads faster.
*reduced file sizes  no longer 50-23kb now about 1-3kb in size*

*easier management with CSS
*I no longer have to build 2 versions of the one page (1 for IE,NS) now i build one page that fits every 
browsers(works in IE, NS, opera- they are the only ones i tried it in) - which means less work for the same money(not that i charged my clients to build 2 versions of the one page)


*no more (well not exactly no more  err  about 1/100 ) reduced fighting to get the browsers to display exactly the same
the only 2 problems i have had with standards are that IE displays CSS tables differently to NS and opera so there for i juse use normal tables so that problem is solved
and PNG tranpancies in IE have a blue background (which is realllllllllllllllllllllllllly annoying)

*other people will be able to read your coding and understand it.

*once i got to know standards, i wondered how i ever survived without them

*someone is atleast trying to clean up the web and say "hey look at this mess - where supposed to be a professional industry and look at the state its in!"

*if the corporations such as MS are at willing to back the standards, then so am I because I love developing for the web -its my passion.
* if i develop to standards it makes me look competant as a web developer
*I get to say to there other guys that i studied with who do no develop to standards  "did you develop that to standards?" and they sort of look at me as if "what standards?" - meaning that you are ahead
of the pack and are looking good.

last but not least which should be at the top of the list, but i left it till last to make sure that you took special notice of it, is because


* It is the right thing to do.


I hope that has helped you...


Gavin