Are W3C standards important?

This article will attempt to explain what W3C standards are and how important they are. Hopefully by the end you should be more informed when talking with your web designer.

What are W3C standards?

Far from a one-off set of standards, W3C standards try to set basic coding standards for all online design and applications. They cover the majority of technologies used on the web, but are most commonly used when referring to HTML and CSS.

These standards should (in theory) also dictate how browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox process web pages.

How important are W3C standards?

Based on the above statements you would think that they would be the be all and end all. However, this is not the case.

Firstly, the web browsers do not follow the W3C standards. In particular Microsoft's Internet Explorer (which is hated by professional web developers the world over) has never followed the W3C standards (and it currently account for about 65% of web traffic).

Secondly, there are some fairly common techniques that are used for creating sites with more interesting functionality, that would make these sites 'non-compliant'. This is completely irrelevant and does not affect the layout or functionality of the web site (and can infact restrict functionality if followed rigidly).

Finally, take a look at the number of errors on some of the most popular sites on the web:

• Amazon.co.uk - Over 600 Errors
• Ebay.co.uk - Over 300 Erros
• Yahoo UK - Over 150 Errors

What matters more is Cross-Browser Compatibility. This means that sites should look the same in all modern browsers. This is a far more interesting and relevant measure of the quality of coding of a website.

So, if someone tells you their sites are W3C compliant, then point them in the direction of this article to show them how unimportant that is.