"How does IE not supporting W3C actually affect you, and why is that actually bad?"
It slows down my development of web sites because I constantly have to remove features that are unusable due to lack of IE support. I can't just develop a standards-compliant site and expect IE to render it. It very negatively affects me because of this increased development time and by virtue of stifling excellent new time saving web technologies. So yes, the lack of 100% w3c compliance does affect me, and all web developers that use more than front page. Of course, the front page users tend to create web sites with some gibberish laced into the html, but that is another issue entirely.
"If you do not like IE, it is simple, use Firefox and stop all the complaints!"
I will not stop exercising my right to protest. I shall continue pointing out the problems of IE at every opportunity so that more people will stop using it, eventually forcing MS to fix IE to stop leaking market share. I am doing my part to make the world of web development better.
"According to the w3c validator site, NOT ONE site is valid! and yet each site works perfectly in IE."
They make the mistake of arrogance, yes.
"Please can you give a few reasons if you had to write a letter to the Director/CEO's of these companies as to why they should go to these standards whilst there website works on every browser that they want it to?"
Industry standards make the world go round. Standards insure interoperability and compatibility. Your PC would cost $8,000 if it were not for companies following industry standards for computer hardware, thus allowing parts from a plethora of companies to work together seamlessly. Your house would have burnt down years ago if electronics manufacturers did not follow the IEEE standards for the electrical power grid, or even the builder of your home. You would not have those fancy USB and Firewire ports that make connecting peripherals to your PC a hell of a lot easier without industry standards. Yes, they were invented by MS and Apple, respectively, but they both have IEEE standards specifications. Following standards is the morally correct thing to do.
Following the w3c standards allows the site to be future-proofed. They are designed in such a way that the standards of 5 years ago are a subset of the current standards. There is no need to go back and fix web sites because of this. This makes the site easier to maintain, which saves time and money. If you take an 8 year old site designed for IE 4 or NS 4, chances are it will no longer work in modern browsers (unless it
only used the most primitive tags). This (and cross-platform support) was the entire point of starting the w3c standards in the first place.
Further, the HTML/etc. proposed by the standards is designed to be easier to use and maintain than older methods. Should we not use CSS and go back to font tags et all? This is a prime example of standards making web development and maintenance easier and faster.
In my opinion, excluding
1 user in any arena due to sloppiness is morally reprehensible. 100% user base should be the target, not 99%. This is what adhering to standards allows in general. w3c is no exception.
"It makes no sense to me why anyone should use a standard that does not actually improve anything and using does not give any improvements..."
BS. Max-width is a beautiful tag. So are many other CSS specifications not supported by IE. The w3c standard web languages contain many powerful mechanisms that provide added functionality and/or provide for faster, easier ways to code and manage web pages. The advancing technologies proffered by w3c have always been designed to increase the flexibility and power of web languages. Plus the whole
standard thing illustrated above.
Some good reading for those with an open mind:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search