Web Standards Zealotry

The Man in Blue, responding to a long thread triggered by D. Keith Robinson, writes about the overzealous way some web developers cling to a validate-or-die mentality.

“I also don’t freak out when I find that someone else’s site doesn’t validate because they accidentally posted a URL on their site which has an unencoded ampersand in it. Why? Because I don’t know why they have that ampersand there. It might be because in order to change that ampersand they have to reconfigure their entire CMS, which would entail a change to their quality system, requiring the re-training of over 200 staff, which would affect their inventory output for the month of October, causing them to lose their biggest client and sending the company into financial collapse. And what for? An ampersand that has no effect whatsoever.”

It’s good to keep one’s head about these things.