How Many “Web 2.0″ Sites Pass W3C Validation?

By now, everybody pretty much knows that valid web site code is pretty important, especially if you want your site to render fast, correctly and have clean code. A few years ago you could debate that conforming to the W3C standards wasn’t necessary, and that tables were still more useful than CSS, but those days are over.

So it’s no wonder that many web designers have really begun taking interest in their own code, making sure it is valid, while at the same time making it work in IE (damn you!). Keeping that in mind, you would think the pioneers of “Web 2.0″ would make sure their web site would keep with this new standard. Unfortunately, you’re wrong.

Keep in mind that I very much respect these companies and what they’ve done, and I’m not saying I’m better than them in any way. Hell, a couple of pages on my site are invalid. I took code from an old version of my site and pasted it in because I am lazy. But, my site only gets around 2,000 visitors a day, so right now, I’m not incredibly concerned. But for a company that is on the top 10 list on Alexa, it seems like they would go the extra length to make sure it was valid. Also, a few of these companies can’t really be classified as Web 2.0 (what the hell is Web 2.0, anyway?), but I still included them in my list as they are very well known web sites that really should have valid code.

Without further ado, How Many Web 2.0 Web Sites Pass W3C Validation?

1. PSDTuts.com – Check validity

OK, I love PSDTuts, you love PSDTuts. I know. I’m just suprised famous web designer/Internet entrepreneur Collis from Envato would let this happen. Granted, he is using WordPress, and has many people working for him now, so it could be either a glitch in the automated posting system, or someone less technically-inclined inserted an image and didn’t put an alt tag, or close the img tag properly. All-in-all, not a bad offense, as there were only 13 errors total. A lot better than some of the sites on this list.

2. Digg.com – Check validity

I love Digg. I probably go there at least 10 times a day. I even got my girlfriend addicted to it. But when I checked to see if it was valid XHTML Transitional as it states in the doctype, I found 41 errors. Upon further inspection, most of them seem to be the links to other web sites using the ampersand improperly, etc…but a few of the errors seemed legit. Comon’, Kevin! (I love you)

3. Facebook.com – Check validity

Facebook rose to fame when it opened its doors to everyone in 2006, and got even bigger when it introduced applications, and a unique advertising system. After its new design was unveiled recently, I decided to check the homepage (before you’re even logged in) to see if it was valid. It was not. :[

4. MySpace.com – Check validity

I’m not going to lie; I’ve been using MySpace since its beginnings. I don’t care what some people say, how it’s the crap of the Internet, it’s for stupid people, etc. MySpace is a great networking tool, and if you want to get yourself known, it is the number 1 site you should head to first. When MySpace FINALLY got a redesign a few months ago, I was happy! I thought, “finally, I could visit MySpace and not want to completely ignore the fact that it’s design was ugly as hell”. After that, I checked the source to see if it was valid…Nope! 132 errors, just on the homepage! However, Tom recently posted a blog that says they are heading towards valid W3C code, which again, made me very happy! Taken directly from the post:

Web Standards. The new profile is fully W3C compliant. It allows profile creators much more granular control by giving names to more objects. We still expect the third party layout market to flourish and will still allow users to use themes from layout sites. When you go to third party sites, look for layouts marked ‘profile 2.0′ because the classic layouts won’t work on the new profile.) (Note: The header and footer of every MySpace page is not fully compliant, but we’ll be working towards changing that, and it should have no impact on your profile style.)

5. Yahoo.com – Check validity

Yahoo! has really been having some issues lately, so I hear. They redesigned, and now they’re getting ready to redesign again. Microsoft wanted to buy them, they thought about it, they said no, their shareholders got mad. Besides all of the latest gossip with the most popular web site on the Internet, you would think they would have a web site with valid code. I mean, how many disabled people visit Yahoo! using screen readers, or other accessibility tools? Who knows, but it’s probably a lot. I wonder if it’s easy for them to navigate Yahoo? Although, I guess if you’re the number 1 web site on the ‘net, you have no reason to care about standards. You can pretty much do whatever you want and you will expect everyone to follow suite.

6. YouTube.com – Check validity

YouTube is big. They were big even before Google bought them out. But any web site that gets bought out by Google pretty much means it is a huge, popular web site. So why on earth is it still coded using HTML 4.01 transitional standards? And on top of that, there’s 150 errors!

7. PhotoBucket.com – Check validity

I’m including both PhotoBucket and Flickr in this list because I consider both of them to be pretty well known and widely used, even though they both have the same objective. PhotoBucket has 60 errors. Why?

8. Flickr.com – Check validity

Flickr should jump out as a Web 2.0 site immediately simply because of it’s name. One of the new crazes is/was to shorten one word as much as possible while still being readable. I don’t hate the idea, but I hate how it caught on so fast. Anyway, Flickr fails the test too, but they only have 59 errors. One less than PhotoBucket! Great job guys!

9. WordPress.com – Check validity

Are you ready for a shock? Here is a site that actually passes validation! Being that WordPress itself is built for web standards and usability, it’s no suprise that their web site is upheld to the same standards.

10. Microsoft.com – Check validity

In the midst of all this Vista sucks XP is better crap, not many people cared when Microsoft redesigned their site. But I did. I was glad to see they were making it prettier, and less I’m-an-important-company-and-aesthetics-don’t-matter sort of company. Yes, yes, more Apple-ish. So on top of the nice new looks, you would expect some beautiful code. Well, you’re wrong. 210 errors. And, Microsoft decided to tell Adobe (then Macromedia) to screw themselves when they introduced Silverlight, and are now using only Silverlight on their site. Funny thing is, Silverlight isn’t supported for Opera, so I see a huge blank space on the top of their site. Nice one, guys.

11. Blogger.com – Check validity

I’ll be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about Blogger. I’ve never had a reason to use it as I’ve always hosted my blogs on my own server and domain. But I do know Google bought them out. We know what that means: It’s a pretty decently large web site. When you visit the main page and look at its design, you can tell it’s a site that emphasizes minimalism. But I was suprised to see that there were still 12 errors in the code. That’s not a lot, but it’s a lot when there’s so little code. C’mon, can’t you fix 12 little errors?

12. Wikipedia.com – Check validity

Ah, what a site. Some people say to never use it, others say embrace it to no end. Personally, I love it. Anytime I want to look something up that I’ve never been able to get a good article on before, I just type it in Google, and the first result is always Wikipedia. Yes, I know that the content cannot always be 100% accurate, but for being free, it is a site one cannot ignore. And guess what? The code is 100% valid. Perhaps this is due to the script being used, “MediaWiki”. But either way, it’s a huge web site and it’s valid. Good job, for real this time!

13. Google.com – Check validity

Everyone and their mother uses Google. And it doesn’t have valid code. Why? The design is so freaking simple. How hard could it be to make it valid? They don’t even specify a doctype. You would think that with all of Google’s talented employee making Gmail and the sort could spend 10 minutes to make the Google homepage valid…but I guess not.

14. Delicious.com – Check validity

Delicious.com started off with an annoying name and domain, “del.ici.ous”. Finally, at some point, they bought out Delicious.com. With that nice change, I thought maybe they had fixed their code too. Nope. 23 errors.

So all in all, only 2 of some of the biggest Web 2.0 sites pass validation. What does this tell us? Companies aren’t seeing it as a big deal yet? Isn’t there some tech head working at the company that could just bring it up? “Hey guys, eh, I think we should spend a few minutes to make our site valid, seeing that thousands upon thousands of people visit it daily.”

What do you think?

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