Standards, use them.

can i just make a quote:

You code. And code. And code. You build only to rebuild. You focus on making your site compatible with almost every browser or wireless device ever put out there. Then along comes a new device or a new browser, and you start all over again. You can get off the merry-go-round.

this is a quote from "designing with web standards" a book which funnyilly enough promote standards

with standards it prevents this rebuild only to rebuild method alot of sites seem to be in. surely if it saves you costs in rebuilding, software building websites with standard compliant code can only be a good thing

if every browser follows standards your site will look the same crosss browser be it ie, be it firefox

standard compliant code also lowers bandwith costs and ive noticed i can litteratly half the code in some pages using standard compliant code. this means less bandwith which means more money saved and also means your website loads faster for the end user!

but yes the fact remains not all browsers are standard compliant. this is why not everyone will join the standard parades until people like microsoft jump on the standards bandwagon

and also id like to add the reason microsoft are not going standards compliant at the moment is becuase alot of websites out there are built for Internet explorer and if they change this you will have alot of broken websites so they are infact at the moment stuck in the middle of 2 discussions with no way out to keep everyone happy.

all my sites will now be built standards compliant. reasons for this are:
1. future proof code
2. lower bandwith costs
3. quicker load times

so all we can do at the moment is promote standards and hope that most people will slowly move over THEN browsers can go standards compliant. then i will know that because my sites are standards compliant i wont have to worry to much because im already one step ahad of it all.

standards arnt there as an attack against microsft, nor are they there to make peoples lives harder they are there to improve the internet and make it more accessible for everyone!