Before we go further, it’s better to know what exactly W3C is.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is an international organization, with more than 400 members, and their main job is developing web standards. W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.

W3C validity, mainly covering the validity of syntax in the markup language (XHMTL, HMTL, etc), CSS, and (sometimes) RSS/Atom Feeds. With the W3C guidelines, all syntax will be more structured and read  perfectly by all browsers.

For a better explanation, let’s use “language” as an analogy. Almost every language has its formal and slang language. The formal one is the language with well-structured, regular vocabulary, and can be understood by all people who use this language. While the slang one, although it can be understood too, sometimes only partially used by certain circles, and the structure of slang language often contradictory and ragged. Let’s change the word “formal language” to “valid W3C”, and the word “slang language” to “unvalid one”.

Some benefits for the valid W3C (markup language, CSS, and RSS) sites are:

• Facilitate Easier Development and Maintenance. Using tags written in a structured will make it easy for other people to understand the contents of the document html.
• Compatibility with the latest browsers. When you use a valid code and standards, will reduce the risk of data you use is not understood by the latest browser.
• Download speed and Rendering HTML. Standard HTML tags will generate minimal filesize, so it will accelerate the downloading time. Modern browser will render HTML pages more quickly when the HTML document is valid in the state.
• A Better Accessibility. HTML valid, structured and separate from the visual tags will be more easily understood by a screen reader and the alternative browser to translate the contents of the document.
• Search Engine Rank Better. Although it cannot be proven clearly, but it’s really make sense that the right separation between content with a visual presentation (HTML and CSS) will facilitate the search engines to read the contents of the document faster and easier, because the content has the largest portion of the document.
• Easier adaptation. HTML page that separate between content and visual display (CSS) will be easily adaptable to the use of other technologies. If you need a print version, you can easily change the CSS, or even disable it.

There are no responsibility for us to fully follow W3C standards, while our website can still look as good as we want without following their whole standards. Even some big website, such as yahoo and google, failed when tested its X/HMTL W3C standard . I found 34 error according to W3C in yahoo.com frontpage directory. In google.com, there are 69 error.

However, it’s better for us to keep our web in the valid path. Maybe there’s no problem at all for now, but for the next, who knows?

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