Is Xhtml Compliance Pointless?

I'm building a site right now, so far I've painfully forced everything to be compliant and it looks pretty much the same across browsers. However, I'm starting to implement some th

Solution 1:

The validation is useful to determine when things are failing to meet standards you presumably agree with. If you are purposefully using a tool that specifically adds something not in the validation standards, obviously that does not break your personal standards agreement.

This discussion gets much more difficult if you have a boss or a client who believes everything should return the green light, as you'll have to explain the above to them and convince them it's not simply you being lazy.

That said, be sure it's not simply be a case of you being lazy. While the validators may annoyingly constantly bring up every instance of the third party attribute, that doesn't invalidate (ha) the other validation errors they're mentioning. It's often worth scanning through as a means of double-checking your work.

Solution 2:

Standards compliance is about increasing the chance that your page will work in the browsers you don't test against. This includes screen readers, and the next update of the browsers you do test against, and browsers which you do test against but which have been configured in unexpected ways by the user.

Validating doesn't guarantee you anything, since it's possible for your page to validate but still be sufficiently ambiguous that it won't behave the way you want it to on some browser some day.

However, if your page does validate, you at least have the force of the XHTML spec saying how it should behave. If it doesn't validate, all you have is a bunch of informal conventions between browser writers.

It's probably better to write valid HTML 3 than invalid XHTML, if there's something you want to do which is allowed in one but not the other.

Solution 3:

If you're planning on taking advantage of XHTML as XML, then it's worth it to make your pages valid and well formed. Otherwise, plain old semantic HTML is probably want you want. Either way, the needs of your audience outweigh the needs of a validator.

Solution 4:

I have yet to experience an instance where the addition of a non-standard attribute has caused a rendering issue in any browser.

Don't try to work around those non-standard attributes. Validators are handy as tools to double check your code for unintentional mistakes, but as we all know, even fully valid xhtml will not always render consistently across browsers. There are many times when design decisions require us to use browser specific (and non-standard) hacks to achieve an effect. This is the life of a web developer as evidenced by the number of technology driving sites (google, yahoo, etc.) that do not validate.

Solution 5:

Just keep in mind that the XHTML tag renders differently in most browsers than not having it. The DOCTYPE attribute determines what mode the browser renders in and dictates what is and isn't allowed. If you stray from the XHTML compliance just be sure to retest in all browsers.

Personally I stick with the latest standards whenever possible, but you have to weigh time/money against compliance for sure and it comes down to personal preference for most.