Mark Anderson wrote:
>...
> I still wish HTML validation was required to publish a page. This
> kind of thing would never have happened if browsers hadn't started
> letting shoddy HTML through the cracks.
>...
And if pages had always been required to be perfectly valid, the Web
would be about a tenth of its current size and usefulness, if that.
Because in the 1993--1996 era, when if you wanted to put something up on
the Web you pretty much had to hand-code it, most of the ordinary people
(not programming types) -- who were just trying to get some useful
information on the Web at all -- would have got sick of chasing down the
last missing </ul> tag or misspelled attribute.
Sure, a few would have stuck it out to produce a valid page. But the
rest would have said `oh, stuff this', and gone and put their content up
on some more forgiving proprietary network, or not bothered to put it up
anywhere at all. The Web would not have achieved the initial growth
which it did. So there would never have been the market for those
authoring tools (even those which produce valid markup) that made it
even easier for other people to publish more information, the
information which has made the Web as useful and as popular as it is now.
The Web loses some usefulness in people not being required to author
perfectly valid, perfectly accessible, well-indexable pages. But it
gains far, far more usefulness in the resulting ease with which people
can put up information *at all* for other people to read.
--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla user interface QA
Mozilla UI decisions made within 48 hours, or the next one is free
