I know many people these days running after W3C valid XHTML & CSS webpages but most of them don't know why should they go for it and I am writing this article to tell people why their pages should be W3C XHTML & CSS standard compliant.
As we all know HTML is the basic language running on the web. All of the web programming languages - ASP.Net, Coldfusion, JSP or PHP - generate HTML pages at the end which get displayed on user's agents. This HTML is not 100% correct all the times. For example, the HTML statement '
This text is bold' will display correctly in some browsers but not in mobile browsers. Also, the statement 'This text is bold & italic' will not be displayed correctly in mobile browsers. The correct HTML statement would be 'This text is bold & italic'.
Technically speacking, XML is a markup language where everything must be marked up correctly for displaying and this results in "well-formed" documents. Now, XML is designed to describe data while HTML is designed to display data. Today's market consists of different browser technologies, some browsers run on computers, and some browsers run on mobile phones or other small devices. Mobiles & handhelds don't have the resources or power to interpret a "bad" markup language and by combining HTML and XML, and their strengths, XHTML is got which is useful today and tomorrow. Experienced web professionals will first check for validation errors whenever they run into a Web styling or scripting bug.
The main reasons why W3C validation for the XHTML & CSS shoudld be done are:
Using a standard & interoperable markup & stylesheets ensures the web pages being handled consistently across platforms & user agents or browsers, whether a PC, palmtop or mobile.
Validation is one of the simplest ways to check whether a page is built in accordance with Web standards, and provides one of the most reliable guarantee that future Web platforms will handle it as designed.
Creating Web pages or applications according to a widely accepted coding style, that is XHTML, makes them easier to maintain, even if the maintenance and evolution is performed by someone else.
Many professionals have been authoring the Web with HTML and CSS for years and know these technologies by heart. Beginners and students, on the other hands, will find automated checking tools invaluable in spotting mistakes. Some teachers also stress that automated validation tests are a good introduction to broader, more complex quality concepts such as accessibility.
Seasoned & able web professionals will take pride in creating Web content using semantic and well-formed markups, separation of style and content, etc. Validation can then be used as a quick check to determine whether the code is the clean work of a seasoned HTML author, or quickly hacked-together tag soup.
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