The simple answer is no.
Every good product should be checked for quality against a set of formal standards – I wouldn’t buy a car which hadn’t passed quality checks, I wouldn’t give my boss a report which I hadn’t spell checked and I wouldn’t put a site online without validating it first.
HTML has rules of how it’s elements can be used and browsers are created to understand these rules and render your page accordingly. If you don’t adhere to these rules you run a risk of your site looking drastically different in different browsers and platforms.
Using an automated tool called a validator can highlight small but fundamental errors which are difficult to pinpoint by hand, such as forgetting to close tags.
The only real downside to validating, is it can be a lengthy process if you’re not used to producing semantic markup by hand, or use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor to create your pages – the errors the validator displays can sometimes be difficult to understand and, if your page has hundreds of errors, finding the main problem can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
However, the benefits to validating hugely outweigh the downside; outlined below in brief, they really speak for themselves:
Validation and SEO
If you want search engines to list your site, your HTML should be correct. Search engine spiders have difficulties indexing pages with HTML errors. Using a validator to ensure your pages contain valid, standards compliant code will make sure the search engine spiders can actually access your pages and include your site in their listings.
Validation and Forward-Compatibility
Valid, standards compliant HTML will render better, on more browsers and faster than HTML with errors. As browsers become more standards compliant, validating your markup will also ensure your site is more likely to work on future browser releases.
Validation and Accessibility
An incorrect assumption is that if you make your pages valid, they will also be accessible – it’s entirely possible to have a fully valid page which is totally inaccessible. Whilst validation doesn’t guarantee accessibility, it is an extremely useful aid; and if the code validates, it makes it much easier to ensure accessibility and usability. CSS validation can also be extremely important to accessibility: using a CSS validator is essential for tracking down errors such as the same background and foreground colours which would cause serious problems for users with custom style sheets.
Some validators:
http://validator.w3.org/
http://valet.webthing.com/page/
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