Mark This Up

“The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter)” (Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag)

So often in various help forums, when I ask about this or that, I've been advised to 'validate' my web page first. Actually, nearly anyone who asks a question about blog templates is advised to run their page through the W3C validator. I think this is bogus advice. Not that valid HTML is unimportant, but in the world of real life blogs, hardly anyone's page actually validates, so what's the point? Seems like wasted effort, and what is called a “non-responsive” answer.

I ran a few frequently read websites (including some commercial media sites that supposedly would even have web designers on staff) through the validation service, and apparently, nearly every page worth visiting fails. Bleh. The next time someone answers my question with a condescending, “well, your page doesn't validate, perhaps you should fix that first, as opposed to the one thing you are asking about.”, I'll have some data for a snarky response already at hand.

Result: Failed validation, 274 Errors
Address: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html?partner=rssnyt

Result: Failed validation, 105 Errors
Address: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/?rss

Result: Failed validation, 144 Errors
Address: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Result: Failed validation, 205 Errors
Address: http://www.boingboing.net/

Result: Failed validation, 340 Errors
Address: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Result: Failed validation, 114 Errors
Address: http://www.bynkii.com/

Result: Failed validation, 114 Errors
Address: http://daringfireball.net/

Result: Failed validation, 21 Errors
Address: http://mediamatters.org/

Result: Failed validation, 32 Errors
Address: http://www.crooksandliars.com/

Result: Failed validation, 2 Errors
Address: http://swanksalot.tumblr.com/

Even MovableType's corporate blog fails.
Result: Failed validation, 22 Errors
Address: http://www.movabletype.com/blog/

my brand new, unmodified 'test' blog for MT 4.0 fails already, and I only have three entries!

Result: Failed validation, 15 Errors
Address: http://www.b12partners.net/zine/

The only page that validated in my brief rundown was Fark.com - and Fark.com has one or two line posts. Simple to keep simple, in other words.

I just want to know why my individual entry pages don't have two columns - something that probably has no relation to the number of errors W3C tells me I have.