hah. thought i'd do my usual deed of stating the obvious.

in terms of client situations - i'm a designer first, developer second. i code to make the design work, not vice versa like some people do. i stick to the standards because it just makes sense. people don't make software for window 98, they work for what the latest system is. that's how i approach development.

when it can be done in xhtml1.1 i do, when it can't, i drop back to xhtml1.0 transitional since 1.1 and 1.0 strict are pretty much the same when it comes to my hitting problems (if it fails to work in 1.1 it's an alignment issue inherited from the strict doctype).

by default, i work css quicks into my designs for little things to save me trouble and little bandiwith issues, but overall the design controls the coding.

personally, i don't think anyone wil say "i want html 4.1" because it just doesn't make sense. you can do everything in xhtml that html can do, and it's got benefits beyond that. plus, if they know enough about coding to want to specify a certain doctype and language, they shoul know better than to request html 4.1

EDIT: because i design first, develop second, i think validation is completely overrated. yes i think it's helpful, but honestly, it's so easy to fool a validator that it's not reputable.

imageready'd layouts, if you add the doctype and add the /'s (i can't remember does the validator pick up on uppercase tags? if so add change case to my list), can pass through the xhtml validator, but they're nothing close to optimized code w/ 30 spacer.gifs everywhere.

i think standards are good on global level, because it get's everyone working on the same page. it's good to be able to push the bounds everyone in a while, but overall we should all be working with the same kind of thing here. every year car companies make nse models, but tey still retain that basic car shape, where the manufacturer puts their personal touch on it. Ford F 150 vs Model T here. the elements are all the same.

as far as validation goes, i think it's good on a personal level, because in most cases if it passes through, the code works, and usually works in multiple platforms. this isn't the case everytime, but a lot of the time when i run into bugs, it's because i've forgottn to close something.

on a public note, i think it's totally useless. i look @ sites with links that say "valid xhtml and CSS" (yes i did that once) and it looks like it says "look at me i can spell correctly". i don't think it's anything to show off. - i can understand when people put them on portfolios because they're either for a school portfolio - often where the code is marked like in my case, or they're developers and their market cares about that kind of stuff.