CornerPixel of Standards

A friend once told me that web standards was my hobby horse.  He was saying this because I was getting nit-picky with a website I was designing.  At first I got a little offended, but then I began to think about what he said and I had to agree that it was my "hobby horse", and that wasn't a bad thing.

I started playing with web design and website creation about 3 years ago and it was all table-based web pages built with Microsoft's FrontPage.  Yes I can see people cringing as they read that, but hey that is how I got started doing something that I REALLY enjoy.  As I started to learn about creating websites, I also began learning about CSS and web standards.  I was lucky in the fact that I hadn't been creating websites since the old days of table layouts, and the learning curve in learning web standards wasn't too much of an issue.  In the three years of learning I have come to love web standards and how much designing a website with them is a benefit.

Okay now having said the above and admitting that web standards is my hobby horse, I also want to make it clear that I am not a stickler about sites being perfect.  I realize that all websites are not alike.  Some sites are built with straight markup and CSS.  Those are easy to get perfect.  Some sites are built in a CMS (Content Management System), and are a bit harder to get perfect.  Sometimes no matter how perfect or valid the designer's markup is when he/she skins or themes the CMS, when the CMS starts spitting out markup of it's own, watch out.  I can't count on my fingers the amount of times I have heard people say that they have perfectly valid markup and CSS but after the page loads in their CMS their site no longer validates.  In that case I recommend doing your best and understanding that the web is not perfect. 

The purpose of this site is and always will be to promote web standards and good valid markup and CSS.  I am hoping that CornerPixel will provide a good place for designers and developers to come and use as a research in creating that "perfect" site.  I am also hoping to find and support different CMS's that do "spit out" / produce standard compliant markup along with support those designers and developers that choose to use a CMS that does not.

We are all in this together.  Let's help each other create nice, sound, and funtional websites.