Pete has posted his annual review of NetGuide nominated sites.

Interesting reading!

I notice Russell is claiming bragging rights for having the only site which is fully HTML and CSS-compliant.

I was a bit disappointed to read this comment though:

“One thing I did notice is the number of sites now using XHTML, but still using tables for layout. I’m looking at you Trade Me. It seems so frustratingly stupid, why go to all the trouble of moving to XHTML and not use it semantically?”

From: Validation the 2007 NetGuide Awards

This time 12 months ago Trade Me didn’t even have a DOCTYPE.

That was embarrassing!

Moving to XHTML (as part of the migration to .NET) was a big job and shouldn’t be underestimated. We’ve removed a massive amount of non-semantic mark-up as part of that process. But we’ve also been pragmatic about it. Where it was significantly easier to use HTML tables for layout we’ve used them. The net result is that our pages are now mostly valid and much smaller than they used to be, but still with a lot of room for improvement.

There are a lot of people who are very passionate about web standards. That’s a good thing. But sometimes I think they approach their evangelism with a little too much vigour.

Give people some credit for the improvements they make.

Remember that they are often hard won.

Don’t confuse better for best.

P.S. It was a good night at the NetGuide awards for Trade Me. We picked up the award for ‘Best Trading Site‘ as well as ‘Best Motoring Site‘ and ‘Best Real Estate Site‘. Full credit to everybody who has contributed to those successes and thanks too to everybody who voted. And congratulations to SmileCity for picking up the ‘Site of the Year’ award. :-)