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Augustus wrote:
> "ETA" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> When you enter any of these sites, the results range from HUGE RED
>> BANNERS screaming at you that this site is a loser and has fatal
>> errors, all the way to "can't validate"
>>
>> Just a few that come to mind:
>> google.com
>> msn.com
>> yahoo.com
>> ebay.com
>> amazon.com
>
> Woah There!
>
> Who said its so important?
>
> Other than the people that hang out in "alt.html" and
> "alt.www.webmaster" (who rely on their ability to meet W3C standards
> to give them some kind of self esteem boost that they can lord over
> others),

that's a fairly damning, sweeping generalisation. your analysis of
motivation seems to be as flawed as your argument for invalid markup -
perhaps we should give the fair folk inhabiting these groups the opportunity
to join in.

> most of the internet community thinks the W3C is pretty much
> just a joke.

prove it.

> Why? Because the companies that develop the mainstream browsers
> (pretty much all the main ones, not just talking Microsoft here) have
> pretty much been doing what they want over the last few years,
> introducing new tags and features and options

which adds exactly how much to the benefit of surfers using browsers that
don't support the features. anybody still using <blink>...</blink>? - what a
splendid contribution to the online world that was.

> Years ago, this was all in the hopes that the W3C would make the tag
> "official"... but in time the companies have more or less given up
> and just gone about doing their own thing in the quest to build the
> better browser.

better browsers are a good thing - but even the very best will have to guess
what you mean if your page uses markup that is out-of-spec.

> So what it all boils down to: You can't surf the net with the W3C
> Validator, you need a web browser... and the companies that make the
> browsers aren't going to hobble their product to make it W3C compliant

no, they all have in built error correction to handle markup that is out of
spec. each browser has its own methods for dealing with invalid markup
which is why standards compliance is important. you know how your pages
will present your content with standard markup - you have no idea how they
will be presented on a browser/platform combo you haven't tested on.

bringing this back on-topic for news:alt.internet.search-engines the most
important UA to visit your pages is google-bot. do you know how that
'browser' processes markup errors?

--
William Tasso - http://WilliamTasso.com