HTML Validation or not?

[a_bertrand]

We had some discussions today in the chat, and we came to the point that some people love to validate their HTML pages and some find it useless (I'm in the second group). You may find all kind of positions on the web like http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/03/html-validation-does-it-matter.html. However what's clear is that:

- Your site looks good

- It looks more or less the same on all major browser

- It doesn't take ages to load.

After that, honestly, who cares if you use XHTML, HTML 4 or whatever else? It must work, and it must attract people. If your site is valid or not, it is your own affair not the one of the people coming to use it.

Also, don't expect an HTML Valid site will look the same on all browsers as it will for sure not be the case. Maybe small differences, maybe nearly none, or even completely different but for sure it will not be the same. Why? Because the standards don't really define at the pixel level how it should look like ;)

[Nickson]

I'll keep it simple:

Validation: no

Keeping yourself to one standard for one whole project : yes

Honestly I personally don't validate my end results either, but if I specify a xhtml doctype, I want that all other files and tags and such live up to the same standard, but in another project I may use a html 4 transitional. So I guess I'm in a 3rd group? Not caring much about validation, but keeping 1 "standard" all over the place and not throwing a mix of html elements in a file.

[Equinox]

I'll keep it simple:

Validation: no

Keeping yourself to one standard for one whole project : yes

Honestly I personally don't validate my end results either, but if I specify a xhtml doctype, I want that all other files and tags and such live up to the same standard, but in another project I may use a html 4 transitional. So I guess I'm in a 3rd group? Not caring much about validation, but keeping 1 "standard" all over the place and not throwing a mix of html elements in a file.

This.

If I'm working on a project, I will keep my work valid to the extent I know. I won't go to a validation site just to be knit picky and work it all out.

I'm aware of mostly what's valid and what's not, what's deprecated and what's not, etc.....

[a_bertrand]

Well a good example of something I will not follow for the moment are the following "deprecated" tags: B, CENTER

for bold why should I write <span style='text-weight: bold'></span> instead of ? Not only it take more characters, it is slower (due to that) on the net, but also more prone to errors while typing. Center is even worse as you don't have a full equivalent with CSS as <CENTER> centers about anything where you need to set what you want to center with CSS (text, div or whatever else).

Other things simply disappeared like the TARGET attribute in 4.1 odd enough this is something I use... so what can you do? JS? well sorry but again it is way not smart.

Another example of pitfall is the XHTML, on Firefox if you use XHTML you will have a different rendering than an old style HTML. So be aware you may end up with different looks just if you start your HTML document differently.

Finally, as I always said, I doubt browsers will ditch support for the old tags (even if deprecated) as it would mean that all the old HTML documents (and there is tons of them) will not be supported anymore. Who would like to have such browser where you can't see old documents correctly? Nobody, and therefore even if the new "standards" don't have support for the old tags browsers will be forced to keep them.

[Equinox]

- replace with

[Djkanna]

XHTML has it's oddies as you would say Alain.

XHTML no error handling like XML which I would think you'd expect from a hybrid of the two (think this was going to be implemented into 2) IE 8 and previous versions are incapable of rendering true XHTML.

Tags are only deprecated in XHTML so going round say b is deprecated is somewhat a false statement as it's only deprecated in XHTML

I'll end with saying I'm in the second group and:

THE BROWSER DOESN'T CARE!

[Djkanna]

- replace with

This would be semantically incorrect, the more semantically correct way would be font-weight: bold;

[Equinox]

Yes, but it's not classed as invalid on a validation.

I'm not THAT picky O.o

Again, I don't feel the need to run to google and validate my site.....

It's just preference -.-