W3C vs. Clients?

[Frenchy]

I was just curious, what would you rather pick when building a web site for a client: web site to comply with W3C standards or to satisfy a client's needs about the site (even if sometimes that means neglecting standards)? Do you think that respecting W3C is important at all?

[Eidolon]

I Find if the more you comply to W3C standards the more clients you'll benefit. It's worth baring in mind that some visitors may need to use screen readers to view pages, they may also have chosen to disable plugins such as JavaScript and/or Flash. Using valid markup is fairly easy to acheive without affecting clients needs. Aspects such as inserting flash (which usually give validation issues) can be achieved with use of JavaScript.

[Frenchy]

Originally Posted by Eidolon

I Find if the more you comply to W3C standards the more clients you'll benefit. It's worth baring in mind that some visitors may need to use screen readers to view pages, they may also have chosen to disable plugins such as JavaScript and/or Flash. Using valid markup is fairly easy to acheive without affecting clients needs. Aspects such as inserting flash (which usually give validation issues) can be achieved with use of JavaScript.

If you use SWFObject.js there are no validation issues with flash. Also, I asked about what do you do and not what would be better. I always comply with W3C but it takes more time.

[paul]

Most of the errors are markup generated by the content management system/session handling code, I think rather than neglecting standards, you should clean up it manually.

[Frenchy]

I hate CMS platforms because their panel offer very small control of your template actual code. That is why I write manually everything. This brings me to the following question: is there some CMS platform that allows you to edit the template manually (completely)?

[paul]

I hope it would be easier for you to adhere web standards from start since you set out to design it manually.

[VPWhat]

I've not yet come across a situation where meeting a client's needs was hard to do within the standards. It at least seems that nothing is impossible, so I've not had to choose.

[Frenchy]

Originally Posted by paul

I hope it would be easier for you to adhere web standards from start since you set out to design it manually.

Yes it would and I do it without any problems. But sometimes I hate the fact that some CMS doesn't have the possibility of editing the template manually. Do you know, for example, if Joomla has such an option?

[flesso]

To be honest, if you're not able to code a client's website to W3C standards then there's either something wrong with you or your clients needs a highly rediculous.

[Buldog]

I always do my sites to comply with standards, client wishes or not. I like to code everything right, it will save a lot of hassle later on when editing.

[haggis]

Personally, I'd stick with being standards compliant. But that's not what you're asking, is it? Well, a job is a job and you get paid only when the client is satisfied. Given that — and given my desire to stay standards compliant — I'll try to explain to the client why being standards compliant will be beneficial to them. If their request requires that I throw standards out the window and if they have already been informed of the potential drawbacks of not being standards compliant but still want to go ahead anyway... well, I'll go and do what they want. Any problem they have after I've delivered the finished product is no longer my problem.

[GalaxyMan]

You should be able to validate whatever the client wants assuming you have a strong grasp of it, however, if you were hired to modify a client's existing website that was poorly coded you might encounter a situation where the website will not validate yet still work and the client might be satisfied with it as they might not care about the validation at all as long as the page renders since they probably don't want to pay extra for you to fix their previous coder's sloppy code.

If presented with such a scenario then you should explain to the client the importance of validation and if they are still not convinced, then simply leave it how it is as long as it works for the time being as that's what you're getting paid for, just make sure that the client is aware that you're not responsible for any conflicts with future browsers due to the lack of proper code.

[Buldog]

If I get a web site that was poorly coded I almost never try to fix the code to validate, but just to work, because fixing someone else's mess is almost harder than making your own code from scratch.