The main site is in the final stages of being revamped, the blog has been renamed and I have started a separate
site as my personal blog to limit the swearing on this site to the bare minimum I can live with.

I would like to point out at this stage that this post is aimed at the less informed whom I will be pointing here in future instead of going through this whole argument with another person who has yet to bother to get the full story before having an opinion. If you really already know, please refrain from stating the obvious in comment to this post – ask nicely in a PM and I’ll gladly spread the linklove.

So … does validation really matter and…

What is validation?

To understand if and why validation matters, we have to look at what we mean by valid markup. Browsers understand HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and interprets this as the text that you see on a web page such as this one. In the markup we have the ability to place images and manipulate the content of the site. I won’t go into detail as far as the actual HTML and its various elements are concerned as this is not entirely relevant to this post. The W3C (the markup standards authority) in conjunction with developers/designers and generally people who know more about these things than us regular code monkeys do, have established a set of rules/guidelines for web designers to adhere to, ensuring that the markup renders the same in all good browsers.

So, once a designer has finished a design, we’d validate the markup against the rules via the W3C validating service and, if the code is valid, we are allowed to display their mark of approval on the site in question. It is also important to note that markup comes in various forms: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), MathML (Mathematics … essentially), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and SMIL (Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language). MathML, SVG and SMIL are essentially XML for specific types of media and XHTML is where we are headed with HTML – XHTML is (according to the W3C) a stricter and cleaner version of HTML.

Over and above the versions of the markup language, we also have three variations on most of them viz. Strict, Transitional and Frameset. Strict is as it clearly states the least forgiving of the lot, Transitional allows us certain liberties in the transition period between HTML and XHTML (which will inevitably replace HTML) and Frameset is a system of frames governed/controlled by a scripting language – the latter being included simply due to the existing browser support of frames/framesets … they actually defeat part of the object of having valid markup, in that it negates accessibility (which I’ll get to shortly). In short: whatever happens in the frames, stays in the frames … not even Google knows what goes down in there.

The W3C also keeps a watchful eye over scripting and presentational languages (PHP, JavaScript, CSS to name a few), but I’ll make that a topic of another day’s discussion – for now let’s stick to markup.

OK … so that’s a mouthful – in short then, Validation simply means validating any of the above against a set of rules that has been created with the eye on setting a programming standard/good practice for markup – now we just need to get the lot that develops browsers to agree with the HTML squad and we’ll be in damn good shape … NOT!

Why does(n’t) validation matter?

Firstly there the physical appearance of your website is at stake, bad markup (normally) leads to websites that fall apart in various browsers, simply because the browser is not sure how to interpret the markup it is presented with. It is still possible for sites to break even if you have valid markup, but that is something we have to test for before a site goes live.

Good markup and the right markup for the job ensures accessibility and that is what we are after at the end of the day. There is absolutely no point to having a website as a platform for distributing information about your company/organisation and browsers and/or search engines being unable to access that information. For instance: Google is slowly but surely putting more emphasis on content and less on user generated meta tags. Search engines use programs called bots to gather information from a website and indexes that in vast databases, which it draws from when you query the search engine for information and which sites to find this information on. If we hide information from these bots, we might just as well not even bother to have a website.

For one … we have abandoned the practice of putting content in frames, because bots will only crawl the surface/shell, they won’t investigate deeper than is necessary. Using the right HTML elements helps bots to sort information quickly and efficiently. HTML is basically a system of giving elements names for all to recognise them by – we define elements with HTML tags … headers, paragraphs, lists, tables (meant for data and not lay-out) are some examples of HTML elements that we define in order for browsers/search engines to know what our websites offer in the line of information.

Bottom line … Validation Matters!!!

With millions of websites out there, we can simply not afford to lose the competitive edge that we negate the moment that we disregard the rules of the game. I see so many good looking websites that have really been thought through very well from all perspectives, being left to be coded by designers who really couldn’t care about their craft and have an “if it works, it’s valid” attitude towards coding …

Have you ever heard of the Bakkie Brigade? No, it is not a modern day white supremest movement from Orania; the Bakkie Brigade is a term that we used a decade or two ago, to refer to the crowd of “entrepreneurs” who bought themselves bakkies and became builders overnight. They were everywhere. The only requirements were that you should have held a tool of sorts in your hand before (or at the very least know where to buy one) and that you must be in a position to afford a bakkie (normally paid for with the money from the nice “package” that came with early retirement and making way for a previously disadvantaged individual). Typically you’d start off as a handyman and before long you’d realise that being a handyman doesn’t go all the way where paying the bills be concerned and that that nice package surely isn’t going to last if you keep on drinking like this. Next logical step is to take on small alterations/renovations and before you know it, you’re building for real and quietly wonder what happened to your retirement intentions (like most intentions they lead to questionable destinations).

The latest craze then (it would seem) is to become a webber. WTF is a webber? A webber is a person who builds web sites off course. We’re not talking about your everyday, garden variety geek here – we’re talking about bakkie brigade drop-outs, medics, marketing students, hell anyone who owns a PC and Frontpage/Dreamweaver (the cracked version) or that knows of a good template site or two. They’re everywhere. In some cases it is just a case of “It looks so bloody easy, why should I pay a designer to do this?” and before you know it (with a portfolio that encompasses one webshite and a logo, homemade in Word or similar design application) we have another webber on our hands.

The problem that I have with this is simply that:

• these “web development companies” price at way below the industry standard to help get their portfolios going.
• the design quality (in most cases) is sub-standard.
• implementation and markup is not standards compliant.

This creates problems, in that:

• established designers/developers either have to compete for business with these companies/individuals at unreasonably low tariffs – devaluing the service as a whole or have to be in a position to compete at the top end of a very niche market.
• companies/designers have to re-educate clients about the value of brand identity when they are already pissed at the industry because some incompetent half-wit has already done them for a scrap of clip-art and a nice font (the name of which starts with an A normally) that was forced onto them as a logo – or worse, you actually have to design them a site that fits in with that crappy (less than)corporate identity.
• web standards (that sounded so catchy when your poor client was first dazzled with the lingo by aforementioned half-wit) and design quality have already fled out the back door on a very long sabbatical and you have to charge the client twice what he paid said half-wit for a company webshite, to create an accessible, compliant website.

…in short – this crowd only screws with the market long enough to screw it up and then leave behind an industry in shambles.

Design is not easy. No one (not even the most talented) gets it right 100% first time, but we keep on trying. We dedicate long hours to keeping an edge, learning new coding/programming languages, experimenting with new techniques, keeping abreast of the latest web trends, developments and standards, ensuring that we give our clients every bit of their money’s worth. I’ll be sure to post a picture of these ass-clowns backsides as and when they leave town in their droves – until then, I guess hope springs eternal … either that or I’m buying a fucking Bakkie.