Google doesn't validate?

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JellyFish
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Google doesn't validate?

Post by JellyFish »

As you guys may know, google.com's html doesn't validate. I would have expected them to validate there html but, to my surprise, they don't.

Why does google not validate?
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

They have more important things to worry about than web standards.
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JellyFish
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Post by JellyFish »

I guess your right. But are they a BILLION dollar corporation? Can't they afford to worry about it?

How important is standards? :?
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

Well this is one of those things that your not really supposed to talk about because everyone gets so upset about it. Here is how I look at it though..

I respect the web standards even though I don't agree with everything that they say are "standards". Microsoft doesn't seem to care about them, otherwise they wouldn't really be that much of an issue because IE would render html and css correctly. If in the course of building something I have to break standards in order to accomplish something, I could care less as long as it renders correctly and doesn't create any other negative issues. One validation rule that I will always break is to open new windows with the target attribute. Standard or not, I'm not going to use javascript to open a new window.

In the example you pointed out with google, besides the fact that they have a lot more pages than just the one you see at google.com, and they also have quite a few developers, it would be quite a hassle to ensure that all code written by all developers is compliant. The main issue though is bandwidth. They optimize some of their pages down to the last byte, mainly so you get the pages faster. It's not really a monetary issue so much as a let's get this <span style='color:blue' title='I&#39;m naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span> through the series of tubes as fast as we can issue. They might have OC12's, but that doesn't do you much good on dial up. In doing so, there is no doubt that breaks a few rules. But in the end you find what your looking for, it renders correctly, and 99.9% of the people that use the site would never know whether it validates or not, and the few that do know wouldn't care.
Arawn
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Post by Arawn »

I was doing a little research the other day and went through Alexa's top 100 world wide and top 100 US. I doubt any would validate. The DOCTYPE must not be that import when you reach that kind of volume.
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

Well, the thing is that web standards are something of only the recent past. Only very few web developers have committed to them. Even less sites have been build with them. So indeed, it wouldn't surprise me if that top-100 didn't validate (at all). And, given the history of browsers (the whole netscape/IE war), it's not surprising that standards hasn't been an issue. Well, in the sense that every browser tried to invent his own standards.

Also, browsers have been build to render almost anything. To forgive almost any faulty HTML. Try it, you'd be surprised what you can send to a browser :)

So, were does this leave web standards? Do they still matter? How important are they? Astions says some things I can agree with.

My thoughts:
Web standards is (much) more then validating. Using web standards is one aspect of using best practices. Validating your code is a subpart of that. Validating your code is a means, not an end goal. I can build a 100% valid site which has horrible code, nested tables, divitis/classitis, is inaccessible, bad SEO-wise, etc. Or I can build a very good, accessible, search-engine friendly, maintainable website with a few errors in the code which doesn't validate. If I had to choose which one to give to the client it wouldn't be a difficult choice.

So the question you have to ask yourself: why do I validate my webpages? If it's only to be able to put a w3c-badge on your site, you might as well not do it.
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JellyFish
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Post by JellyFish »

lol. I've always expected web standards to become the future of the web. Seeing as I would like to keep up with the evolution of the internet, and everyone else, this is what I thought to be what all the fuss was about.

What makes web standards, mainly, important?
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

JellyFish wrote:lol. I've always expected web standards to become the future of the web. Seeing as I would like to keep up with the evolution of the internet, and everyone else, this is what I thought to be what all the fuss was about.

What makes web standards, mainly, important?
What do you think yourself?

And if you'd think about other industries, say car manufacturing, what reasons could you think of why standards could be important there?
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