About the W3C: The W3C is an organization dedicated to standardizing the web. It is responsible for drafting all kinds of web-related specifications. For example, the CSS4 standard and XHTML were both created by the W3C. Why create these standards? The reason is simple. Web pages are displayed in different browsers. If every browser used different syntax, web designers would have a hard time. But getting all browser vendors to agree on one standard is difficult. I think the main reason is that they're all competing with each other. That's why the W3C was created: an impartial third party drafts the standards, and each browser vendor (such as IE, Opera, and Firefox) must follow these basic rules. Of course, browsers can add their own syntax if they want. Still, not every browser follows the W3C specifications. Big names like IE don't, which is why many web designers have a love-hate relationship with IE (love, because so many people use it; hate, because it doesn't play by the rules). Now that you have a basic understanding of the W3C, let me show you how to check whether a web page meets the standards....