There was a time where web design was a wide-open field. Anyone with FrontPage â„¢ and a browser could fancy themselves a “web designer”. This is akin to saying anyone with a hammer and saw could fancy themselves a carpenter. But with the world wide web being so cutting edge and free.. people said, “Why not.”. Of course, this is how many legitimate web design professionals got started, so it wasn’t all bad.

Back then and up until about 3 years ago, 90% of users had Internet Explorerâ„¢ and the other 10% had Netscapeâ„¢. Each browser fought for dominance and tried to establish the standard. Microsoft®, up to it usual tricks, creating proprietary code that only worked in their browser. While Netscape did the same, yet touted to be the purest form of HTML rendering. Neither was.

A little known organization called the WorldWide Web Consortium (W3C), who had been the real standard bearer since the WWW (as we know it) came to be, had worked very diligently on establishing code standards for the web. They were and are the classic disinterested third party. They are disinterested in making browser software. They are disinterested in acquiescing to the almighty Microsoft Corp. Instead, they are interested in establishing an objective standard by which all browsers and designers should use to allow for uniform functionality without compromising creativity. This is what the W3C is about.

However, Microsoft IE still dominated the landscape and most designers and programmers (professionals too) yielded to the quirky signature oddities of the browser… regardless of W3C validation. Many simply designed for IE and didn’t know or care about validating for “proper” code standards. That was until Mozilla Firefox came along; and Apple Safari, and Chrome; and Opera… and a few others. People began to change their loyalties and discovered that you could browse the web without Internet Explorer. They found that some of the alternate browsers were actually better in many ways. So, the 90% days of dominance were over.

Today something like 40% of all web users use something other than IE. It still dominates, but not nearly as strongly as it did. What this has done is reinforce the idea that there needs to be objective standards that these browsers must follow at a minimum. No longer can they risk messing around with HTML. Sure, they can have their quirky tool bars, and interesting plugins, but the basic function of viewing a webpage must be equal across the board.

How can this be done? As it has since the beginning. The W3C has come back into fashion and is finally reaching the level of importance they deserve. Now, validating for HTML, XHTML and CSS means cross-browser compatibility whereas it did not several years ago. This is because the browser makers are finally complying with the W3C standards and taking a different approach to market distinction. Creating cool new interfaces, skins, tools and so on is decidedly a better way to be different or better or both. Messing with the way HTML renders… not so good.

So what to do now. I for one have realized the power and benefit of validating for W3C standards. I was like many and did not care too much about it for a long time. I used to try and validate for HTML 4.01 Strict or even XHTML1.0 transitional and found it frustrating that there were 38 errors and half of them I didn’t even know why they were wrong. Now, I have seen the light and its all good. The key thing to remember is that for every error there is a solution that turns out to be better than the old way.Once you “get it”, you won’t know why you didn’t catch on sooner.

Happy validating! For more information and to validate your website visit the w3c validators.