I’ve been doing a lot of reading on XHTML, CSS, and design lately to
find out what I would need to make this site standards based.

In my research, I’ve found something interesting. Although developers
and geeks are quick to rally on the to the cause of web standards,
rarely any sites out there actually use them. Everyone out there
crucifies Internet Explorer for not following standards, but what’s the
point? If Internet Explorer was standards compliant, would it make a
damn bit of difference or would we continue to code non-compliant web
sites as long as they “worked?”

Out of all of the sites on my blog roll, only three actually validate.
Those sites are IT Notes, Molly.com (with warnings), and Jason Mauer
(validates as XHTML Strict! – way to go Jason). Interestingly enough,
usability and style sites like 37signals and 9rules also fail to
validate and even large sites like the beloved Google and CNN.com fail to
validate.

If so many of these (functional) sites fail to validate why is it so
important to adhere to the standards? Are they just rules that are
meant to be broken or should we web developers actually be paying more
attention to them?