TwitterWebdesigner Depot are on a roll at the moment, putting out some really useful and informative articles, covering some of the basics of good web practice. This latest article covers the practical, long-term benefits of using clean, maintainable markup:
Mobile browsing is growing like Godzilla on atomic-steroids. Instead of being relegated to the jet-setting Blackberry addicts from 5 years ago, today everyone is using their phone to surf the web.
Assistive technology -screen readers for the blind and alternate interface devices for the handicapped- is common, and you don’t want to lose a sale or alienate traffic just because you didn’t take that into account.
Your site is likely to be translated into a half-dozen languages as readers from around the world find your content. Thanks to the Internet Archive, Google’s cache and others, pages you publish today will be around for a long, long time even after they’ve been removed from your live site.
Clean markup and standards-compliance will go a long way to ensure your sites work in each of these scenarios.
Even if you’re a hardened web developer who knows your craft well, I think it’s always good to refresh your basic knowledge with articles like this: sometimes to reinforce your assertions and assumptions; and sometimes to pick up useful tidbits which have passed you by, or which you haven’t given much thought to.