Valid HTML

I'm working on a new website for a friend was just wondering how much it really matters if the html/css is valid. I've made websites in the past and never paid much attention to how valid it was. The sites tuned out fine, so it made me wonder if validity really matters.

Any thoughts on this/

i usually try and follow conventions, but to be honest i dont see any problems in not following the conventions. Codewalkers certainly isnt "valid" html and it renders correctly in all the computers i have ever used to view it in.

According to an article i saw somewhere the conventions where mostly about portable devices not having the processing power to deal with "invalid" html but most modern mobile phones, PDA's etc have the processing power that they need to do this (all be it a small ammount needed).

In my opinion if we followed the conventions 100% we would spend more time playing around with the source than we would with the content of a website or how it looks to a user plus making my site valid isnt on the top 10 most important things for me.

The question isn't "why should you follow standards?" it should be "why shouldn't you follow standards?" The more you follow standards (whether it's external standards like XHTML 1.1 or internal standards, like indention and variable naming), the easier it will be to maintain your (or somebody else's) code later on.

However, you need to keep your priorities in mind and not let standards-compliancy get in the way. I doubt very many people would suggest making things compliant is more important than making them work correctly. But if you can have both, why not?

If you are starting a site from scratch, it certainly is worth while to shoot for compliance.

I like to validate my html to better browser compatibility, some browsers are less strict and allow errors, other browsers dont, so what you see on one browser doesnt necessarily mean you will see the same on another.

It is also good to help you find missing end tags etc. if your the type to hard-code html.

Okay, so it looks like to start out, I'll keep it valid. But, if it becomes too much work to make it stay valid, I may just give it up.