We're All in This (CSS) Boat Together

When my boys Keith and Mike take pot shots right to the face from Ethan on the damn WaSP website, then I knew I had to reply on my weblog with my own thoughts regarding validation and other fun stuff.

If you link to a CSS file at the top of your website, and when I scroll down I see lots of divs and semantic goodness, then that's good enough for me. I can't recall the last time I busted out the validator and ran through a brand new site. Usually I open the source, check the doctype, and I'm good to go.

I don't think people are remembering why there's even a "web community" to begin with. Remember the standards movement? Remember banding together to fight evil table code? Let's jump off each other's backs over validation, because you know what? It's childish and unprofessional.

Or let me put it to you this way: would you rather have an XHTML Transitional page with some errors, or an HTML 4 page with no DOCTYPE? We need to all stay on the same side of an argument because we're fighting for the common goal. At least we used to be.

Comments

[Derek Featherstone]

If you link to a CSS file at the top of your website, and when I scroll down I see lots of divs and semantic goodness, then that's good enough for me.

I'd have to say my thoughts are similar, Mike -- my litmus test for new sites is disabling CSS and seeing what is left over. If it is intelligible, and I see that there are no layout tables, and nice structural headings, lists, etc, I make the assumption that the developer/organization is "doing the right thing".

I still think validation is an important detail, and it provides a good baseline for my work, but I'm also not going to question someone else's professionalism etc if they don't have everything 100% when coming out of the gate...

[Nicole]

Validating is hard to do. Consider a fairly large site where the content is controlled by various departments and individuals -- there's only so much one can do to keep ampersands and Microsoft Word smart quotes properly encoded to ensure validation. Validation is a great ideal (and something to work toward), but not necessarily workable in the real world, with users that don't know (or care) what character encoding is.

[David Schontzler]

I think the real sad thing is that "standards = validation" really misses the point. If I decide to only use one standard, say CSS, then am I not designing with standards? Who's to say otherwise? On the other hand, I could still have a perfectly valid and completely table-based design. Of course, I'd be following standards, but I'd get bitchslapped for not being semantic (whatever that really means, who knows?).

Validation is a tool for developers, not a gauge of your peers. If you are repurposing your content through XML services in any way, your stuff better validate (actually, it just has to be well-formed, validity be damned). If you are showing up on a web browser, validation isn't as important. Validation is for machines, not people.

If you can make your blog validate, more power to you, but it is largely irrelevant.

[Dann Ryan]

I must say I am on the other side of this arguement. I am all for validation, I validate everything, and when one of my own sites fails, I spend hours toiling over code to fix the problem. I think the key to standards is everybody following the same guidelines and working their hardest to continue to do so in the future. I know, validation can be a pain in the ass, and some people wayyyyyy over emphasize it. But I don't think there should be some sort of movement against validation, some effort to cut it out of the process. To me, the design process goes something like " code --> is the layout perfect? --> does it validate? " I'm sorry, but I don't feel comfortable going live with a site that doesn't validate, to me thats like coping out and saying I am just too lazy to actually finish the whole project I set out to do, design an accessible site. If you stop practicing this in every project (i.e. your blog) its only a matter of time before it starts to lose its hold in the real important places.

[Nathan Logan]

I am all for validation, I validate everything, and when one of my own sites fails, I spend hours toiling over code to fix the problem.

I realize you are talking about your own site here, but what about when your boss tells you to quit wasting company and client time and to start working on something else? That's the thing...the Law of Diminishing Returns. At what point is adding the closing slashes to img tags worthwhile (assuming you had to go back and do this)? 5 minutes? 2 hours? $100? $1000?

If you stop practicing this in every project (i.e. your blog) its only a matter of time before it starts to lose its hold in the real important places.

Right. I would love to see even ONE actual business case to support this.

Man I'm abrasive. Sorry about that.

On the positive side, you're right, following the same guidelines is what the standards community should be all about. We need to keep in mind, however, that they are just guidelines.

[Jakob]

I'm with Keith and you on this. Any movement towards web standards is an improvement. Nobody ever "had" to adopt these standards. They could continue to use clunky HTML 3.0 if they wanted. To see a site such as ABC push a major redesign out to the masses sporting a mostly valid CSS is an amazing accomplishment, and one that will hopefully make other large companies also take notice.

@ Dann: I have to agree with you that we all follow the same guidelines, but to what extend is where I disagree. Instead, I feel we should all be working towards the same universal goal- and that is the goal of lighter, efficient, and effective code. When you are building a site from the ground up, it is very easy (and important) to make sure your base model will validate. In the case of the ABC redesign though, the amount of backlogged work that would be needed for every past page to be brought up to code would be enormous. It's not that they weren't following standards back then, but rather that new standards came out that superceeded the old. You never had to mark an ampersand as & in HTML 4, and so on large sites with distributed authorship, nobody ever did. I always saw my design strategy as: code -> does the layout meet the need -> is the layout functional -> does the base layout validate -> will letting 3 years of web content be dumpted into this "validate well enough".

... damn I rambled.

[Dann Ryan]

I abologize as well if I came off as a little abrasive myself. Perhaps I don't have the working experience as some of the rest of you. My current web design job is for a university and the redesign project I am working on right now, my boss provides me with more than ample time to validate and re-validate if need be. Accessibility is our number one goal, and comprimising it at any point is just not acceptable. But then again, they are paying me hardly anything, so I doubt they are losing much by me toiling over code for hours. I guess each situation should be handled differently. I just feel on things, especially like a personal blog, validation shouldn't be overlooked or comprimised.