On W3C
Today I was asked why one should follow W3C (WWW Consortium) standards and I why I try to do so as well. Well, it seems like I found a nice analogue to this: following W3C standards is like following grammar and spelling in general language. There is an HTML (or CSS or whatever) language and there are rules that describe it pretty much the same way it happens with natural language.
Not following W3C standards causes browsers to interpret things in the way they like more, some just can even ignore things they don\’t know. The only problem here is that not all browsers know/follow W3C standards themselves, but this, according to my thought is the same as they didn\’t study well at school and don\’t know how to interpret the language :)
Nice analogy – I hear people dismissing W3C standards constantly which is really annoying, since there are advantages to be found in terms of web accessibility, browser compatibility and even search engine optimisation that can be harnessed by adhering to many of the check points for XHTML/HTML validation. Moreover, every other industry out there has standards and benchmarks of quality, but many designers and developers out there seem to be reluctant to give credence to, what they see as, a threat to their creative freedom. Its an odd state of affairs.