“Web standards? You can’t afford to ignore them anymore,” writes Paul Boutin in Webmonkey (via bBlog, as I didn’t know Webmonkey was still breathing).
I agree, but essays like this ignore mitigating factors: Man-hours, revenue-generating issues, time allotments, legacy code, browser stats. I’m knee-deep in a push for standards at Economist.com, but I am required to advocate a long-term solution, which will take a year or more to fully implement.
Last I saw, too, the 4.x browser usage on my employer’s site was still a lofty 15%, which complicates things. Every “compliant” markup I see has all sorts of level-4 browser contingency workarounds which, while “clean” in the purest sense, are no more useful than the old table-and-font model.
In short: Baby steps. I want standard code as much as the next plastic-bespectacled usability expert, but I want it without sacrifice.