Re: my new website - feedback required...

"Stevie D" <stevie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hdqhb212sf6krbe7tg1gkkgl0c1ug55oq5@xxxxxxxxxx
Owen wrote:

I listed a bunch of websites that don't validate. Yet, astonishingly,
they
remain popular and clear successes. And therefore, quite simply, this
PROVES that validation of html means *** all in terms of success of a
website. All that other stuff you wrote doesn't change the plain fact,
now, does it?

Those websites have succeeded in spite of, rather than because of, any
technical failings they may have.


But still they succeeded.

And I'd bet that not one user has EVER complained about their HTML not
validating.

I suggest you read Nielsen's article on why comparisons between major
players and start-up websites are pointless:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050725.html
::: Summary:
::: Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status
::: as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal
::: sites should not copy Amazon's design.

Doesn't change the fact they were successful in spite of HTML not
validating.

Amazon has been running for 11 years, and was one of the first online
retailers - but didn't make an annual profit until 2003.

I'm guessing you probably haven't got that long.

Ok, let's get some perspective. First of all, the site I posted about, is a
personal hobby site. It is not a commercial venture. But even if it were,
I would still be concerned about accessibility, and I would still NOT
consider W3C to have anything to do with it. I cite agian the examples of
other sites which are perfectly accessible WITHOUT being W3C compliant.

Given that most
online markets have now been filled, if not saturated, your site is
going to have to offer something extra to compete.

Compete with what? It's a personal hobby site.

The best way to do that is to ensure that it works in _all_ browsing
situations, opening it up to the maximum number of potential visitors,
and also making it more popular with search engines.
The only way to do this is with clean, valid HTML code.

No, it's not the only way. In fact it makes very little difference. This
may seem like plain ignorance or arrogance to you, but really, it's not. I
have been authoring websites for several years, I used to spend ages
ensuring my sites were W3C compliant after newsgroup posters moaned that
they didn't validate.

Then I realised that my end users didn't actually care at all. Furthermore,
I realised that a site can be perfectly accessible without W3C compliance.
And that hundreds of excellent websites are still excellent, and perfectly
accessible, without coming close to W3C compliance. And I realised that
W3C was little more than a pointless obsession among certain web developers.
I've seen many websites proudly proclaiming themselves W3C compliant, yet
their content, their look & feel, was a load of crap. Their precious W3C
sticker will do little to help them. Content is king.

Have you EVER had feedback, or a guestbook entry from a visitor to one of
your sites, where a user says "Your website sucks because the HTML doesn't
validate"? Come on, be honest. EVER?


Doesn't matter. The point is their sites don't validate. Yet you refuse
to
criticise *them* for it. Their "clout" has nothing to do with it.
Either
W3C validation is important EVERYWHERE or it isn't at all. You can't
have
it important for some sites and not others.

Validation is important for all sites. Really good sites can get away
without it.

Hold up here. What *exeactly* do you mean by "get away without it"?

Do you mean they can be accessed quite happily enough regardless of
non-compliance?

Do you actually mean they can get away without your personal criticism of
their non-compliance "because they are popular"?


That doesn't mean that they _should_ - I despair of how
Google's homepage is so simple and yet the code is so hideously bad -
but the sites are good enough that people forgive them when things
don't go quite according to plan.

What do you mean by "good enough"? Be specific here.

Your site isn't that good.

No, and I would never suggest my website was as successful as Google or
Amazon. It's just a personal hobby site which I put online a couple of
weeks ago. I'm not in competition with such sites.

I would say, however, that my site is equally as accessible as either one
of them.

I'd chose the one who's portfolio of websites looked nicest on 2 or 3
different browsers.

That's a really good way to make a choice.

That was sarcasm, in case you missed it.

How about looking to see if they work,

goes without saying.

if you can accomplish the sort
of task that a typical user will have?

goes without saying.

How about checking whether they
are accessible,

goes without saying (and as I've proven, has nothing to do with W3C
compliance)

and how they appear with assistive technology?

maybe, but realisticly this doesn't matter in vast majority of cases.

How
about searching for key words and seeing if those sites appear in the
top 5?

again goes without saying, and totally away from your original question.

How about asking the designer for his view on how successful
your site will be?

goes withou... ah, you get the idea.

I wouldn't want to do business with a client who was so blasé about
the quality of the product I was supplying him with.


The HTML validating has NOTHING to do with the quality of the product. I
have cited various examples and stand by them, and I utterly reject all
pathetic attempts to make those examples "exempt" from being used as
examples, including any number of articles you may quote from.

If by some wierd freak of nature, a client said, "ooh but your html doesn't
validate", (which I suspect they never would say), I'd simply reply "Neither
does Amazon.com".

That's not to say that I wouldn't do business with a client who was
clueless. If he accepted that he didn't know all that much about web
design, and would leave the technical stuff to me, that's fine. But if
he told me that he wanted it to look right on IE6 and Firefox and
didn't give a stuff about anything else, I wouldn't touch that job
with a bargepole.

Up to you. I did a job for a client who wanted exactly that, and his money
looked just as good in my bank account as anyone else's.

So let me get this straight. You actually had clients who insisted on the
HTML validating? Or even clients who looked at the HTML code at all?
Clients who ever heard of W3C?






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