Cleaning up the clutter: why web standards matter [Web design]

Log on to the Internet Archive Web site (http:// www.archive.org) and load up the oldest version of your organization´s Web site. Now view the source. Does the code you see give you a headache? Because they placed little emphasis on code quality in the early days of the Web, developers instead focused on doing whatever it took to make their sites look a certain way when a viewer used a particular browser. Proprietary extensions were common, ensuring that a page that worked one way in Netscape would work differently in Internet Explorer unless the developer took the time to code multiple versions of the same page. After many years of sloppy code piling up around the Web, a movement is formed to standardize browsers and the HTML that they were interpreting. The industry has finally begun to accept the wisdom of designing with Web standards. But perhaps you´re still not convinced; let me try to persuade you.