[thelist] What does standard compliance actually mean?

[Jonathan]

Andreas Wahlin wrote:
> To many, standard compliance seem to mean stuff like "semantic web" 
> and sometimes even "unobtrusive scripting/graceful degradation". But 
> doesen't standard compliance just mean that you follow your declared 
> doctype and validate against the w3c validator, not that I automaticly 
> write insanely great webpages (from a code view)?
This is a word of the law / spirit of the law debate.  The bottom line, 
as with all technology, is that you can use it for good or evil, and 
that standards compliance fit both definitions you just presented.  And 
all technologies that have standardization efforts almost always will, 
because technologies that require standardization debate require it 
because they have a tendency to be otherwise.

You're probably wearing socks.  Is there an international standards 
organization for socks?  Probably not.  Are there "industry standard 
practices" including dimensional standards?  Yea, well, I imagine so.  
Socks follow feet, so therefore you don't need to spend a lot of time 
building standards to support them.

Web standards has no feet. ;-)  The term exists to support an effort to 
define standardized ways of approaching communication technology to 
accomplish some clear goals - lower costs, easier maintenance, better 
accessibility, etc.  But there isn't one problem that needs to be 
solved.  It's an exercise in complexity management done in order to 
solve specific problems and achieve specific goals.

The reason for the validator is to provide a baseline tool to help 
developers understand how far they are outside of agreed upon standards 
(bearing in mind the reason for the standards is just stated).  
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you talks 
about WHY it's important.  Bear in mind that validation isn't a be-all, 
end-all.  Some very well known developers have intentionally broken 
their pages in an effort.  I would strongly suggest reviewing 
(http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2004/06/march-to-your-own-standard) 
Mike's discussion on why his site doesn't validate.

So, the question you really need to ask yourself, which is far outside 
the scope of the question you asked, is, "Is validating against the w3c 
validator going to provide enough assurance to solve these problems?" 
and "What provides the best value in the long term to my audience, 
client if you have one, and overall design goals?"  I'm not going to get 
into one of those debates about standards here -- because basically 
they're almost always pretty retarded lines of reasoning.  Part of the 
insanity of being a web developer / engineer is actually balancing these 
competing influences and "making the call" based on unique situation 
you're in.

If you want to follow just the word of the law, then yep, validating is 
enough.  If you want to follow the spirit of the law, well than that's 
something else -- and you'll have to define just what that means on your 
own.  There is no "one answer" to your question.

Jonathan