At Pop Art, we have some very talented folks that adhere strictly to Web Standards. It takes much discipline to develop web application using Web Standards as its often not the quickest path to a solution, but offers significant advantages for clients and future maintenance. In general, gives almost all the tools necessary to create web standards-based applications. The Pop Art development team has become adept at making .NET controls emit compliant XHTML.
I crafted much of what we have learning into an MSDN Magazine article that was published in the April. The introductory paragraphs give a good description of the contents of the article. If you are interested you can read the rest of the article here.
I have to admit that Web standards were not always very important to me. Like many of you, I began writing Web pages at the time the first Web browsers were being released. Back then, I thought closing every HTML paragraph tag would slow me down and consume unnecessary portions of a user's precious 28K of bandwidth. So, I didn't do it. As long as the browser didn't care, neither did I.
Since then, however, I have begun to recognize the importance of Web standards to the future of the Web and of Web-based software in general. Of course, Web standards are about much more than closing HTML tags. They are a critical factor in how well software components can be used in future contexts.
Besides complying with the W3C standards for XHTML, cascading style sheets (CSS), XML, and so forth, Web applications should be search-engine friendly, accessible, have human-readable URLs, and employ other accepted practices that make them easier to find and use. Web standards also require careful attention to the structure of the code behind the sites, making it easier to maintain in the future. In this article I'll explain why everyone, especially those writing server controls, should adhere to Web standards.