I believe you were. I was just asserting the fact that the majority of problems are due to improper coding. However, it is easier to place the blame elsewhere.

I was being a wise guy, as usual. Do not take me so seriously. I like to have fun in the forums while giving my bad advice.

I absolutely agree with your coding comment.

Thank you all for your feedback. Your perspective on the whole topic is very much appreciated...

Chris

Just a thought on this subject... To ensure W3C compliance, should I be considering Visual Site Designer? Don't know that it includes CSS. If it does, it might be just what I need. Thoughts?

I first built my site in 97 using the 97 CC Editor as a hobby only, something to keep me away from the idiot box in the evenings. I didn't expect to make money from it.
Being a rank amateur I used tables for page layout - each time I ventured into the realms of CSS positioning and playing with margins & padding, I seemed to get bogged down with browser compatibility issues.

As my site grew it actually started to make me money (i.e. I get genuine queries from prospective clients) and I had to think about priorities.
Thus version 2 which should be uploaded soon concentrates mainly on improving SEO with minor changes to overall look and navigation (I've upgraded to the latest CC Editor & discovered CSS Menu Designer), and getting my files to validate.

Version 3 will dump tables in favour of CSS with tables only used for the occasional tabulated data, but I have a lot reading and experimenting ahead of me to increase my knowledge & skills before that happens.
I'm using IE7 as one of my test browsers and I'm hoping with the release of IE8 there will be less browser compatibility problems - but after looking at the posts in various threads on this forum I'm not going to hold my breath.

Re tables for page layout - I've found that using tables seems to restrict my thinking into a coarse grid paattern, if I use CSS positioning I'm hoping I'll be able to "think outside the boxes" much more than I do at present.

I haven't tried IE8 yet, is there an improvement in conforming with standard?
Does having a file validate without errors means it conforms to W3C or does it go deeper than that?

Yes and yes.

Sorry to be jumping into some of these older threads, but just a couple of thoughts here.

W3C and compliance are certainly of utmost importance, but there are other issues when it comes to browser compatibility. When choosing scripts, it is vital to check for issues with at least the latest versions of FF, IE, Opera, Chrome, and Safari. There are many that are outstanding with one, but utter failures with others.

I would also say that "formatted text" causes issues at times.

Then I have to ask all of you CC users if you are applying the "Preview" feature of HTML Editor? Very simple to set up to check each of your installed browsers for compatibility.

I DO make a living building websites, and although I despise IE, I always check it for compatibility since it still garners over a 70% share of the public.

I never rely on a preview feature to "test" my sites. I don't rely on services like browsershots either. I use the latest versions of FF, IE, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. And I don't worry about outdated versions of any browser. It works for me. I don’t have the resources, the inclination, or the false presentation that I do, to worry every browser ever known to man.

I use the preview system all the time myself. I don't use the in program preview to judge for all browsers since it's based on the IE engine and you don't get true results for the rest of the browsers that way. I mostly tend to just upload it to a test site if I'm doing major things, and I just upload it if it's minor stuff and test it that way

As a quick test I use the Preview in HTML Editor but always check again when its online. Some things like flash don't show in Preview but will when online so you really need to upload for that...but its a very useful tool to give you an idea how things are going and what any code changes have done.