CSS Validation and Standards; Does it matter?

I may not be the most popular person for saying this, but designers are not developers and developers are not designers. Granted, a large majority of us do both the development and design of the sites that we work on, but we are one or the other. Designers and developers fit into one of two mindsets. Any really good programmer will tell you that they know jack about design. I don't know any really good designers personally, so I don't know what they will admit. Anybody can write a SQL query page, and just because you can, does not make you a developer. Anybody can make a web site header image, and just because you can, does not make you a designer. I can say that I do not fit into either category, just because I don't consider myself good enough to fit into either one. I'm not good enough at design to consider myself a "designer", and I'm not good enough at development to consider myself a "developer". Now granted, I'm sure there are some people who are phenomenal at both, but believe me, they are the extreme minority. Designers understand color theory, typography, form, and balance. Developers understand branching GOTO statements, they can even work out multiple branches in their heads, real developers understand arrays, and are not afraid to use them, developers, like chess players, are always thinking about what they are going do while they are doing something else.

I use automotive analogies for everything, so I'll use one again this time:
When GM designs a new car, they do just that, they design it. Those same guys do not go and build the engines for these cars too....they just design them. Granted, I bet you that every engineer working on the powertrain has opinions about the design of the car, but it doesn't make him a designer.

I'm not trying to poop on anyone's parade, but there is a serious difference between serious design and serious development. I would say that a lot of the more advanced Flash animations are definitely the exception. If you look at the amount of actionscript programming that goes into those things, you'll see what I mean.

A perfect way to research this yourself is to go buy a few web templates. You'll see that they might look beautiful, but the HTML is crap. If you want it done right, many times you'll have to take the PSD in Photoshop and re-cut it back up again correctly. I've bought too many templates that simply do not allow for stretching. Be wary when buying the "Full Site" templates. Another good way to research this yourself is to go to a web site that offers pre-built scripts. Download some of the applications, and note the default designs. Blogs, classified ad systems, guestbooks, calendars, mailing list managers, e-commerce, and similar systems.