What is the best way to support Web standards?
This is a tricky question and the answer would differ depending on who you ask. As standards and browser support for those standards evolve the playing field will change, thus having an effect on how Standards are supported by developers. My advice would be to strive for an advanced, yet practical, approach. Where you can and where it makes sense, go with as little presentational elements in your XHTML as possible. In other words try and go to XHTML 1.0 (strict DTD), loose the tables, (except for tabular data) font tags, etc. and place all your presentation into your CSS. If you can’t support it all the way, that is ok, it’s not the end of the world if you need to go with XHTML 1.0 (transitional DTD) or have a page or two that doesn’t validate. The key here is to understand where you are lacking in standard support and make contentious decisions as to what you can (will) and can’t (won’t) support.
