The Web has been around for a good few years now. Most people are aware of it, if not using it in their every day lives. It has come a long way since the early nineties when Web pages consisted of a bunch of simple tags that linked to other pages with basic information in them (maybe even with the odd image!). If someone even suggested an idea like You Tube or Facebook, they may well have been laughed out of the building.
Browsers like Netscape Communicator were the dominent tool of choice for anyone privaliged enough to have access to the internet with Internet Explorer being a much untrusted security flawed piece of software (not much has changed there then).
These early browsers were extremely flexible and let anyone who cared to, make their own sites which looked much like any of the others that were around.
Its a bit like surfing. The only downside being that people who have never tried it always ask, why on earth do you do it!? Answer - to make clarity out of chaos when many forces are acting against you.
The need for Web Standards was recognised by the Worldwide Web Consortium which was founded in October 1994. Ever since then they have been working on these standards to make sense of the chaos that was the Web.
It's up to those geeks called Web Developers to make it happen. Web sites will always be able to be built in any way that a person with access to the Internet sees fit in their own little world. I doubt we will ever eradicate bad Web sites purely due to the fact that the Web is so open, we wouldn't want it any other way! The difference comes if you want your site to lose clarity, become bloated and out of control, or you want your site to make your life easier both now and into the future with these consoderations in mind:
From a Developers point of view, a professional will always be a professional, in any Industry. If you want to be known as a talented workaround specialist who can 'get things done' that's great, it just seems more appealing to be a forward thinking professional with a real passion for the future of the Industry.
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