I was just looking through the Template Offers forum and noticed that all templates I saw are using tables for layout. Does no one use web standards? I would like to know if its important for normal people (you guys) to have web standards. Do you guys feel that standards are important and should be used?

I look forward to reading your comments.

I feel standards within any industry and/or technology should be followed to some degree, especially when it's revolving around accessibility. It's a shame people abuse (X)HTML, it's worse when 'developers' aren't willing to learn, rather than just don't know any better.

The WCAG are something a bit funny, yet easy to follow. I personally don't feel the first level is strict enough on the developers project, although the last 2 are about right in my opinion.

Is it important for a normal guy? Yes. Is it important for an 'abnormal' guy? Yes. It doesn't really matter who you are, it's important.

It's 2006 now ;)

personally all of my work is XHTML 1.0 strict...as pauly said its 2006 now...its about time we follow standards =)

There are more people using standards for their coding work in the templates area than you may realize. You just have to dig a little.

Are standards important? Every single browser manufacturer has publicly pledged support and compliance to W3C standards (yes, Microsoft included, they just struggle the most to comply). Guess what folks. Browsers are how people view the Web. If they comply with standards, there's little argument over whether the developer should as well.

That being said, it should always be pointed out that coding to standards does not in any way insure the coding practices being used are good ones! I use this analogy a lot, and I'll use it again. Standards define the tools in a developer's toolbox. If you were building a house, you wouldn't use a baseball bat to hammer a nail into a wall. You'd use a hammer. The same is said for markup. You use the tools that best defines the structure of your site and site content in accordance with the proper professional toolset (as defined in W3C standards).

Keeping with the analogy, just because you know enough to use a hammer on nails instead of a baseball bat doesn't mean you placed the nail in the right spot. You can use the right tools and still have shoddy craftsmanship. Similarly, there are still better and worse ways to use the right tools when marking up a page. But using the right tools is at least the right way to start.

I think using layout tables is the easy way of doing things which is why so many use it. CSS can be tricky some times. Your site may look right in IE but when you view it in another browser, things kinda get messed up. But once you get the hang of it, getting validated becomes easier.

Getting more and more people to adhere to standards is a good thing. The code is cleaner and more compact. Whenever I see a good site, I always look at the source. If they used a tableless CSS design without flash and javascript image rollovers (and it still looks good), then my respect for that site's designer grows tenfold.

On a side note, I just tried vaidating the URLs of Yahoo, Google and MSN. Only MSN passed validation.

Im glad to hear this, but reply #2 brings me to another point; using xhtml incorrectly. IE does not support xhtml and I hace seen many people argue endlessly that it does, this is only true if use it with a text/html MIME type.

This is incorrect as the document should actually have a application/xhtml+xml MIME type. If you put the correct MIME into your page you will see that IE cannot display it.

So I totally agree with the_pm.

If you use or are thinking of using xhtml I would recommend visiting these two sites:
Webdevout (http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware_of_xhtml.php) and hixie (http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml)

..... This is incorrect......

XHTML 1.0 specifically allows a text/html MIME-type. Therefore it would be correct, whether it's required or not is a different matter ;)

To me not using the correct MIME type intended for xhtml defeats the object and you may aswell use HTML 4.01. If you use any features of xhtml then they will not be displayed properly if using the text/html MIME type.

You can see an example of this by viewing a document with a text/html (http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware_of_xhtml/example2.html) MIME type and the same document with the correct application/xhtml+xml (http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware_of_xhtml/example2.xhtml) MIME type.

As you see a pretty big difference, so it really is true just because you know enough to use a hammer on nails instead of a baseball bat doesn't mean you placed the nail in the right spot.

See, I do almost everything in XHTML served as text/html now, but that's because I'm comfortable with Ian Hickson's statement:The only reason step 6
didn't happen in those cases is that they were advanced authors who
understood how to fix their content.I like that XHTML forces me to write well-formed markup, even though I know I could write it well-formed as HTML too. But I'm not bothered by the prospect of switching to XML in the future. I'm ok with this transition :)