Anyway, that wasnt the real reason I wanted to post a comment. Some pages that we would like to be validated cannot because the developer has thought of helping the user. As an example of this I have created an XHTML .0 Trans page that doesnt validate. Fixing the page would unfortauntely make only the text on the links clickable (as seen on the left hand side of the page). However, it is much nicer for the user to be able to click the entire div (as it has been made to look like a button). You can see the page at the following address: http://www.myothersheepisacow.com/179-360innovate/

The W3C’s XHTML is of course a good guidline to follow, but it isnt always possible to make the page as user friendly and still have a valid page.

And to say that it helps browsers if your page is compliant is simply not the case. A perfect example of this is that so far only 1 broswer passes the acid 2 test (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html) - Opera, which very few of the web users actually run. Browsers are created to accept a compromise between accessibility, user-friendliness and valid html. The example in this page is enough to invalidate your entire post, as if everything went your way, this page wouldnt actually be readable by users visiting your website in a browser that only accepts valid markup.

Steven Freeman