How important is it to follow web standards? [closed]

Answer 1

In short -- very. For purposes of cross-platform & cross-browser compatibility, it is important.

Do you need to follow them to the T? If you don't, you'll probably be okay.

A lot of things that do not follow strict standards are legacy applications that have been modified over time.

In my opinion -- there's no reason to not follow strict standards on a new project.

Ian

Answer 2

It's all about making your web site function to your specifications, and function consistently across today's most commonly used browsers. Pragmatically, web standards do not take priority.

Answer 3

You can go by a simple rules that applyes to html,css,c,java...anything.

Stick to the standarts unless you have a good reason to disregard them. If you do not stick to the standarts document why not.

Sometimes you will run into situations where you have to violate the standarts to write a workaround, or speed up your code or ....whatever.

Whenever you feel you have to disregard the standarts you should write a note WHY you did it, so you or another developer who runs into piece of html(or CMS code) knows that this is NOT a bug.

And yes sometimes the "good reason" is a deadline or a crashed server. As long as you document it is OK.

Additional pro: If writting non standard html(or code) that does not comply to the standart is an exception chances are good that you get used to writting clean code.

Answer 4

The W3C standards are very useful, but they are a means to an end and not an end in themselves. The end goal of these standards is cross-browser compatibility, which is very important. The standards on W3C come second to making sure your application operates correctly on all the different browsers that will be used by your audience. Web standards also gain a lot of value when you keep SEO in mind. Adhering to standards will make your site more visible to non-human users, so if search engine visibility is of concern to you, web standards should be as well. This may not be a huge concern for the "major websites" (as they are already well established in search engines), but may be to you.

So, web standards are important for cross-browser compatibility and for search engine optimization purposes.

Answer 5

The only reasons website designers historically have not followed web standards are (1) not being aware of the standards at all, or (2) to make non-standard-compliant browsers (*cough IE cough) do cool stuff. But Internet Explorer has recently been making a significant move towards standards compatibility, so reason (2) is becoming less and less relevant, and you're obviously not subject to reason (1), so why not write standard-compliant websites? As others have said, it will make your code much easier to debug because you only have to work with one standard rather than a bunch of different browsers.

Answer 6

It depends on the size of the project and your budget. If you need to quickly get something done, that does not have too much functionality and your main purpose is to get something done and move on, then standards are not important. You will spend double the amount of amount of time adhering to standards when your project is very small.