A great article by Ethan Marcotte on how we need to redefine the message we use in web standards evangelism. He touches on two things that baffle my mind. First, I don’t understand why anyone would ever validate someone else’s code and then speak publicly about the errors they find. If you do that, you’re being an asshole. Period. Validation is a process for you to do on your code, so as to help you avoid the timesink that is working with broken code later — using invalid code will especially kill you when you go to add DOM scripting or CSS to the page. Don’t validate other people’s code. It’s assholish. Second, he mentions how some CMSes are still spewing tag-soup all over our web. I find this, frankly, absurd. If your CMS that doesn’t allow you 100%, full control over its output via a template system of some sort, you’ve got to find a way off of that thing. Any CMS that doesn’t give you full control of the output is not worth anyone’s time.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whereourstandardswentwrong
001 // Keith // 02.27.2007 // 9:47 AM
I totally agree with you about validating someone elses code. Now, as far as the CMS issue goes — again, I agree with you. But, as I’m sure you recognize, the choice of CMS often isn’t made by the people who deal with the templates or people who care about this stuff. In fact, I’d say that is pretty rare.
Which is a shame.
Not that I don’t agree with the sentiment, only that it speaks to the fact that standards and their benefits still have to be sold up the ladder to the people who make the decisions. Something I feel like I have to do all the time. Luckily it’s not all that hard a sell.
002 // Jeff Croft // 02.27.2007 // 10:06 AM
Yeah, you’re right. It’s sort of baffles me that there still even exist CMSes that don’t give you total control, though.