Thread: Designing web pages

When I entered my charity's website address in the World Wide Web Consortium testing site, it failed with hundreds of errors. But then so too did a number of prominent web pages that I also submitted for test, some with just a few errors, but others with more than 100.

If my website looks good in Internet Explorer and Firefox, does it really matter how the pages were constructed? I can understand that some kind of standardisation is an ideal goal, but as the saying goes, 'If it works, don't fix it'. Will there come a time when nonconforming web pages cease to work?

Not meeting the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (or W3C) is fairly common as you have found, but it does not mean that your website will not work. In fact, not all web browsers follow the standards themselves.

Striving for absolute perfection is rarely feasible, especially if the problems have been caused by design software. For this reason, it is very important to use the correct DOCTYPE command when writing a web page by hand. Choosing the Strict option tells the web browser to be very picky, maybe leading to the page not working properly.
We recommend previewing the website in as many browsers as possible before publishing to the internet. In addition to Internet Explorer and Firefox, it is worth checking Opera and Safari.

The latter browser was previously found only on Apple Macs but now has a Windows version available at. Some of the standards may not affect how the website looks but will affect whether or not it will be picked up by the likes of Google, and it is very hard to promote a website without the help of search engines. For example, always include alternative text for images and tooltips for links. These will also help any disabled users
who view the site.

It is also possible that future browsers will be less forgiving of errors in web pages. F or this reason it is important to keep testing the website when new versions are released.
Running a successful website involves constant maintenance.