Comments on: Well formed validation of XHTML pages http://gabrito.com/post/well-formed-validation-of-xhtml-pages Anecdotes on Java, Ruby, Sysadmin, SEO, Design, and Management Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:33:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Matt Dudbridge http://gabrito.com/post/well-formed-validation-of-xhtml-pages/comment-page-1#comment-19 Matt Dudbridge Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:40:38 +0000 http://gabrito.com/post/well-formed-validation-of-xhtml-pages#comment-19 It's an interesting point you've raised here and one that I've also wondered about. I used to work for a CRM firm where I developed and maintained a fair few reporting extranets. There it was considered vital that all of pages where W3C compliant, as we were creating sites on behalf of a third party. It looked good for the company if the marketing team could promote our products by stating that all of our sites were compliant. It meant that I picked up a lot of good XHTML habbits, but apart from being able to slap a W3C logo on every site, it didn't bring any additional benefit to the company. All of our pages were viewed from PCs or laptops, and since a lot of the data was very graphical, it wasn't suitable for screenreaders, PDAs or mobile phones. Since I left the company and changed sector, W3C compliant code is considered a 'nice to have'. You're very right, it should be easier to produce templates and validate code for well-formedness, but I think for many large companies the benefits don't really out-weigh the additional development time. That said, it probably won't be long before sites that aren't compliant are considered less valuable. Google already indexes on this basis: when I made an older version of my web site XHTML and CSS compliant, my rating shot up! It’s an interesting point you’ve raised here and one that I’ve also wondered about. I used to work for a CRM firm where I developed and maintained a fair few reporting extranets. There it was considered vital that all of pages where W3C compliant, as we were creating sites on behalf of a third party. It looked good for the company if the marketing team could promote our products by stating that all of our sites were compliant.

It meant that I picked up a lot of good XHTML habbits, but apart from being able to slap a W3C logo on every site, it didn’t bring any additional benefit to the company. All of our pages were viewed from PCs or laptops, and since a lot of the data was very graphical, it wasn’t suitable for screenreaders, PDAs or mobile phones.

Since I left the company and changed sector, W3C compliant code is considered a ‘nice to have’. You’re very right, it should be easier to produce templates and validate code for well-formedness, but I think for many large companies the benefits don’t really out-weigh the additional development time.

That said, it probably won’t be long before sites that aren’t compliant are considered less valuable. Google already indexes on this basis: when I made an older version of my web site XHTML and CSS compliant, my rating shot up!

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