Just a month ago, I was talking to one of the founders of a local startup and informed them that their web site failed validation. In response he asked if it was important. I didn’t want to be pedantic so I just shrugged it off and said not really.

After all, their product was pretty good for what it does and the website did look the same in all the browsers I opened it in. I couldn’t bear to to knock on them for something deemed insignificant by our industry. Just wait till browsers get better at conforming to the specs; they’ll be wishing they had.

Are we so stuck in our old ways, using tables for layout, putting image tags in markup for layout, that we just can’t see how much easier it would be to create valid semantic HTML? Yes, I meant easier. Well, in software development, the easiest way is often the hardest. But after working with semantic HTML and CSS, I can say that this is not a scenario where that adage applies.

It is easy to create standard markup that all browser displays the same way. There, I’ve said it. That’s the trick. If you’re trying to do something that cannot be created using simple markup, chances are you’re doing it wrong. There’s a simpler way to do it; you just have to separate the markup from the CSS. Content in markup, layout in CSS. Now give me my $10.

For a lot of us, validating our markup was an exercise we did in Polytechnics; a way for the lecturer to tell us what was wrong with our codes. Now that we’re in the trenches, where the reality is life and death, passing validation doesn’t seem all that important. Impressing the client with jazzy effects does.

What? Our tables aren’t displaying correctly in Firefox? Let’s just use these hacks. Tada, done! They should promote me. Sometime soon.

What’s wrong with this picture? I doubt that many web developers know (Singaporeans especially, judging by our track record and decline of web standards groups), because their age-old ways have served them well for decades. Doesn’t it strike anyone as wrong how we manage to pull a straight face when dealing with clients, selling them code from a decade ago?

We know something ought to change (okay some of us don’t) but this practice is prevalent in web agencies, big or small for clients big or small. Just check out any government website’s markup to see what I’m talking about.