Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards

(damn.. I can’t comment there :P, so lets do it here)
I don’t care if someone made my house with a hammer, I care whether I will be able to change my house when I require.. CSS does a great job with that. You can even create a maintainable and extensible site without CSS, it is just a bit harder. Explaining this to a customer is a lot, just explaining you use CSS is usually enough.. too bad that some people misuse the terms. Webstandards and all those other things basicly have got the same idea behind it as CSS.

Those same people that you mention Matt are the same people who consider it religious sacrilege if you use anything BUT tableless designs. But just as many web developers have a legitimate enthusiasm for standards because of it’s ability to remove those hours of frustration of making your design work with numerous rendering engines each with their own quirks, bugs, and ’style’.

IE the real fuss of web standards is because if adopted properly, would mean you could write HTML once right, and it would just work on all the browsers. Obviously this gave birth to all sorts of confusion for people who didn’t truly understand what web standards are all about and they then went on a religous crusade against using “target” attributes in links since it was “deprecated”, and using even one table in your entire site.

Now that is a Mystical misunderstanding of web standards that probably goes along with the mystical belief of their powers you talk of but that should not be confused with the truly awesome REAL power of web standards - no friggen browser inconsistencies!

Burn in hell IE!

(Just had to throw that in there )

I think Vincent’s point isn’t that we shouldn’t care about standards. His point was for the people who wade in and their first thought when designing a website is “I must adhere religiously to the latest doc type and I must not use a single table or I will burn in hell”.

By all means, use CSS layout techniques and go all XHTML 1.1 strict, just don’t tell everyone they have to do the same - and don’t poke out my eyes if I throw a table in there to overcome a few IE quirks.

The Paranoïd Standards Gurus are as everyone who tends to impose their will to others without letting any liberty. Managing a XHTML+CSS design is not really accessible to a beginner :/ and when you understand well the “how to”, you realize Internet Explorer is a shit in CSS processing …

At least, it’s important to respect the semantic, not to have a tableless website. Once you get it, it’s ok.

It’s even got to the point now where using a table for tabular data is seen as ‘dirty’ by elitists.

I remember the fuss caused by a certain few when Matt used a table for the IPB member bar to fix an IE6 bug

I say, if the site looks good in all browsers and any Resolution.
Who cares if its following web standards?

As long as its doing its job. Then by all means, its doing good.

use CSS layout techniques and go all XHTML 1.1 strict,

Ther is no XHTML 1.1 strict.

[quote]I say, if the site looks good in all browsers and any Resolution.
Who cares if its following web standards?[/quote]

No matter what there is in your plate while it’s beautiful ? No matter how are procuced your shoes, even if it’s a 5 years old kid underpaid ?

Sure it’s not the same thing but the only thing to remember is “structure & organisation” : it helps a lot.

Ok, so maybe standards should be followed.
You can still have structure and organization without using standards.

As a side note, my shoes are dirty and old.
If it works, looks good in all, and organized & structured. Its good. Doesn’t mean its following standards.

It would be easier if we could design it once and not have to worry about it not working in certain browsers. I hate when that happens.

People who can’t code in XHTML 1.1 Strict kind of suck…

There should be standards… and yes, a division is for a division and a table is for tabular data.

Some day they should require permits like they do in building permits so people use the same standards. It should happen.

I suck then.

I wouldn’t use a XHTML 1.1 strict DOCTYPE if you paid me.

I agree with Matt here.
I don’t know how many times I tried to make my documents XHTML 1.1 Strict and failed to have it exactly the way I want in every browser I can test.
I use several different types of computers to test my documents and I can gurantee that if it doesn’t work out on just my computer. It’s not good.
Every document I have created that looked like I wanted in all my tests have never been XHTML 1.1 Strict.

But for your analogy, take into consideration on a permit for building a house…
Have you ever seen shortcuts made by Construction workers that normally would not pass inspection?
Nothing in this world follows 100% standards.

Except for maybe a period at the end of sentence.
Nope, maybe it don’t… .

Chad

XHTML 1.1 Strict does not exist…

Chad, Following standards means your site should work accross all browsers as intended unless the browser itself has issues, I don’t see any reasons why you wouldn’t follow standards other than a few CSS hacks for IE.

You speak as if I do not know what Standards are.

How can you design a site with standards when most browsers don’t even follow standards.

So many times have I designed in 100% standards and it looks different between Mozilla and IE. If it looks different in just those two browsers, imagine how many other browsers it looks different in.

I’ve given up on IE, I just send it the documents without CSS.

You should follow the standards or we will end up in a situation where browser compatability is far worse than it is now. On a similar note all browsers need to follow the understanding too, but there is little chance of Microsoft doing that.