News Flash: Web Markup Validation Still Irrelevant!

MSN’s markup validates. Google’s doesn’t.

Which site do you prefer? Which is better?

Despite popular opinion among the client-side elite, markup validation and XHTML on the web continue to be totally unimportant and entirely irrelevant.

Meanwhile nasty, dirty, flexible, forgiving HTML does all the heavy lifting in making the web work with little fuss and no glamor. Just as it always has.

Other than those few of us who like to apply more advanced XML tools and technologies to our markup, XHTML on the web should be avoided and validation ignored. But we’re a niche market to be sure.

We web monkeys need to stop kidding ourselves and realize that there’s little to no value in approaching web page validation as an end in itself. I will admit however, that it can (rarely) serve as a useful means to other ends. But that doesn’t justify the inordinate amount of attention we seem to be paying the matter.