There are three specific reasons, with answers. Why we should always validate our websites.
The novice (or non-technical website owner) question:
"my site looks right
and works fine - isn't that good enough?"
The perceptive observation
"lots of websites out there don't validate -
including household-name companies!"
The strawman argument
"validation means boring websites, and stifles creativity"
My site looks right and works fine ...
The answer to this one is that markup languages are no more than data formats. So a website doesn't look like anything at all! It only takes on a visual appearance when it is presented by your browser.
In practice, different browsers can and do display the same page very differently. This is deliberate, and doesn't imply any kind of browser bug. A term sometimes used for this is WYSINWOG - What You See Is Not What Others Get (unless by coincidence). It is indeed one of the principal strengths of the web, that (for example) a visually impaired user can select very large print or text-to-speech without a publisher having to go to the trouble and expense of preparing a separate edition.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the best-known browsers - Netscape Navigator and MS Internet Explorer on Windows - are visually very similar indeed in their presentation of many documents, differing only in trivial details like margins and spacings. The "same" browser on a Mac or Unix/Linux display will often look far more different.
Now that You have looked at Your site on Your machine (PC) try a Mobile, late version of any browser, or a Dial-up-Connection and then tell me what do You see then.... Sad isn't it!! Not what You have expected right. Validation is needed now and moreso in the future since all websites will have to validate sooner or later. Start Your business right from the begining & don't waste time and money which can be used for advertising on re-designing later.
But all those big sites don't validate!
Do remember: household-name companies expect people to visit because of the name and in spite of dreadful websites. Can you afford that luxury?
Even if you can, do you want to risk being on the wrong side of a lawsuit
if your site proves inaccessible to - for instance - a disabled person who
cannot use a 'conventional' browser? Accessibility is the law in many
countries. Whilst validation doesn't guarantee accessibility
(there is no substitute for common sense), it should be an important
component of exercising "due diligence". It is now just over a year
since a court first awarded damages to a blind user against the owners
of a website he found inaccessible (Maguire vs SOCOG, August 2000). Their is 160 report on this issue, So You can get an Idea of Your liabilities....
QUOTED: From Joe Clark's report
For content creators, the lesson of this case is simple: Accessibility is easy, it is not optional, and if you keep ignoring it you may someday find yourself in court. If an organization as powerful as a national Olympic organizing committee - with effectively unlimited resources and, on the part of its paterfamilias, the International Olympic Committee, a century-long history of exclusion and inaccessibility - can lose a case like this, other cases resting on similar legal principles are likely to prevail.
Validation kills my creativity...
This is simply head-in-the-sand ignorance (indeed, it lies at the heart of the most spectacular hype-filled dot-com failures). Validation is fully compatible with a wide range of dynamic pages, multimedia presentations, scripting and active content, etc. It is part of the difference between doing it right and doing it wrong in a dynamic multimedia presentation, just as much as in a purely textual site.
It is perfectly in order for authors to express their creativity on the Web, though it is of course generally more appropriate to some sites (e.g. recreational ones) than to others (e.g. informational or functional sites like this one). But authors with creative ambitions should bear in mind that in any artistic field, you must start with a thorough understanding of the rules before breaking them. Otherwise you just look foolish.
Did You know that a FLASH MOVIE can actually show the viewer; TEXT, IMAGES, & LINKS automatically. Instead of an (X in a box) if The viewer's Browser doesn't have/support a Flash Player...
Did You know that the INPUT TAGS for all Online forms should carry, a LABEL TAG for those Physically Impaired "Blind or Deaf"
