Webdevelopers write rubbish

[Fang]

Markup validation report (http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/mama-markup-validation-report/)

[scragar]

I can't remember where I saw it, but there was a quote something to the effect of:
HTML validator annoys me, tons of errors but the site works

Which is followed by something that(while I wouldn't call it accurate it's certainly a good impression of the way things work) goes something like:
1% of you will disagree with me, 1% of you will agree, and 98% will have no idea what I'm talking about

The fact is most developers couldn't care less if it validates or not, they want to write it quick, have it work for now, and get paid, they don't care about the long term effects, or want to check it in a validator to see if it's still valid or not.

Having said that, 4% if a huge leap up from the last one...

[Declan1991]

I don't find that it is slow creating accessible validating pages, I just think that developers who subscribe to that argument won't take the five minutes planning how to lay out the page, though that is just my opinion.

I think that all XHTML validation doctypes should be removed from that, that is only kidding oneself.

[xvszero]

Hmm, I just ran the front page of my main site...

110 Errors, 7 warning(s)

DAMN.

[opifex]

take particular note of the "Why are so few pages validating?" section"
out-of-the-box cms really would be the number one culprit because "it's easy to use"
we've fixed a couple of these for clients because they had to have "x-brand! CMS" - the cost was higher in hours than it would have been to develop a customized cms from scratch.

[Shorts]

Personally I find valid pages to be a lot quicker to develop. By keeping all of my (x)HTML as pure structure and all design in CSS making a site cross-browser is usually no big deal resulting in me not having to curse the IE gods a lot of other developers like to (I blame them).

Although I will be honest, right now the writing pages on FinalSandwich.com (they are user generated) are not valid. Its because I'm currently using RichText Editor. Might check out TinyMCE as a replacement, or try out HTML 3.2 documents for them and setup str_replace for common invalid HTML that they'd put in.

[aj_nsc]

Just a comment to you, Shorts, I'd take a look at FCKEditor before TinyMCE. I think it wins hands down in that competition, but that's my own opinion.

[LeeU]

Yep, just like any other trade .... some builders build lousy houses; some engineers create lousy cars; etc.

[Shorts]

Thanks aj_nsc, I'll definitely check it out. Benefit is that its just a personal site for fun so no rush on finding the ideal solution.

[Jeff Mott]

I'm sure there are grey areas for validation. Recently I was on a project that used a .NET CMS. Everything on the page was valid except for an ID, id="__VIEWSTATE", which was automatically generated by the CMS. Even though everything else was valid, that one error would be enough to place that site in the invalid category.

[drhowarddrfine]

One misplaced decimal point can do a lot of damage. Invalid is invalid whether it's one or a million.

[Sunny G]

In the 1970's, one of NASA's deep space probes failed. One of the programmers left a semicolon out, thereby screwing the mission. The probe went off its trajectory by thousands of miles and was lost. Validating the code would have saved the mission, not to mention that programmer's sorry A:eek:

In the case of web development, a misplaced semicolon won't end a multimillion dollar space mission. Still, one can see the consequences of shoddy programming. Better safe than sorry.

[wh666-666]

Markup validation report (http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/mama-markup-validation-report/)

Thanks for that post.

Really interesting article. I got quite caught up reading that.

As other have just said, it is quite tragic web developers dont validate. However in the article as he said, a lot of it is amateurs wanting people to look at their cat, or professional developers who couldnt care less so long as it displays properly.

The problem is, if you're hiring in developers, you're doing so because the company doesnt have the inhouse skills to do so and are probably unaware of validation.

[KDLA]

I wouldn't just blame web developers. I've designed many valid websites, handed them over to a client for maintenance, then validation went down the tubes.