Re: Shaming compaines into improving their HTML

At 05:55 AM 5/24/2001 , jason r tibbetts wrote:
>Companies aren't going to use valid HTML until two things happen:
>1) The most ubiquitous UAs stop handling invalid HTML silently, and

BTW, I don't agree with the common assumption that it would be a
-good thing- if user agents started breaking horribly (e.g. like
an XML parser encountering unwell-formed markup).  In fact, I think
this would be a very bad thing.

>2) Authoring tools start producing valid HTML. I would wager that few large
>corporate sites are done with hand-written HTML; most Web designers probably
>-never- look at the source. Why should they?

Eh, large corporate sites probably aren't even "written" as source
anyway.  There's as much onus on the people who create site
generation/maintenance systems as there are people who create
authoring tools -- in other words, Dreamweaver is only part of
the picture, there needs to be support from people like Reef (the
company I work for, and no, Reef is -not- at that point yet, but
thanks for asking).

Anyway, I agree with jason's primary point which is (if I can be
allowed to restate):  Change will occur if there are good business
reasons and good support for valid HTML, and likely not from merely
the threat of public embarrassment.

This may be a better topic for a list other than www-validator.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                http://kynn.com/
Technical Developer Liaison, Reef             http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://idyllmtn.com/
Online Instructor, Accessible Web Design     http://kynn.com/+d201

Received on Thursday, 24 May 2001 10:55:24 UTC