Why Standards?

I'd been chatting with one of my favorite blogger & designer, Boy Avianto. I was asking why website or weblog has to use web standards? And what are the advantages? He told me that when our site is using standards, it is the same as the cars (products) that has been tested and well-proven by quality control. The advantages are forward-compatibility and browser-independency. Alas, web standards today is just only a matter of choice.

For today, we're still younglings who are learning about how to build in a better way through standards. I found Dan Cederholm, as one of the standards geek and his website is called SimpleBits, describing the results of using standards. This is an excerpt about his work:

...
SimpleBits is built on a foundation of web standards — valid, structured code to produce pages that will look great on modern browsers yet still functional and useable on older ones. Utilizing web standards leads to real results:

* Decreased bandwidth and server space
* Improved accessibility to all browsers and devices (including those with disabilities)
* Increased separation of presentation layer code from content
* Simplified updating of look and feel
* Faster page loading
* Lower costs
...

I begin to understand, why Avi screamed to us to stop poluting the web.

UPDATE 09.08.05:
Read also, Eric Meyer interview with Radio NZ about the real benefit of using web standards and Jeffrey Zeldman's From Table Hacks to CSS Layout. Both of them come from the old days.