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Non-compliant does not mean non-compatible, because, all the content on this site should be viewable, by all browsers. It might, however, look a little odd, or not be formatted at all, and therefore rather boring to look at. Non-compliant means that your browser lacks supports for internet standards, developed by the W3C, that make the web better for both the designer and the viewer.
Let me elaborate. Web standards make the web better for designers by letting us concentrate on content and design separately. In the old days sites were very static in the way they displayed content. Markup (the code used to tell the browser what data was to be displayed) was bloated due to hacks needed to make an eye pleasing website. A separate version of the site might need to be created for each browser, because of differences in the way they processed markup. To make a long story short, this made developing websites a long, troubling process, and it made many a designer very frustrated.
Back to how standards make things better. Like I said, designers now can deliver content and design separate of each other, without having to use hacks of old. One version of the site can be read by any browser that can interpret the markup used. This personally makes me happy and I know other designers that jumped for joy when they started to really understand this. If the designer is happy, and has more time to spend on writing fabulous content, rather than fighter with some table to make it display exactly how he wants it to, everyone is happy.
But enough about us, on to how standards make the web better for you. I'm sure you're thinking, "Sure, better content. That's all fine and good, but how does this really affect me." One of the biggest things that I can tell you is that this method cuts down the file size of pages, and therefore the download time. Here's some examples:
I recently reviewed a gentleman's website for him. His home page consisted of 3 columns with navigation in one, 3 or 4 paragraphs in another and 2 lists about 8 items long in another. His code alone weighed in at a 109KBs! That's approximately a 30 second download on a 56Kbs connection. That's just for the code. No images or multimedia, and since all his design was hard-coded into the markup, a similar download would happen every time a new page was requested.
In contrast, look at Jeffrey Zeldman's site. He has at least twice as much content on his homepage, with a file size of 27KBs. The CSS he uses to control the design is about 10KBs, and once that style sheet is downloaded once, it will be cached on your computer, and used for all the webpages you view on his website. The total weight excluding images and media is approximately 37KBs which is about a 10 second download on a 56kbs connection. For every other page that you download will be just the markup, which for the homepage example would be about a 7 second download in contrast with a 30 second download for the first example.
Not only will pages be a smaller file size, but accessibility increases. Web browsing is not confined to the desktop anymore. More and more mobile devices are capable of browsing the web and pages using this style of coding is viewable in those devices also. Though the design may not appear exactly the way it does on a desktop or laptop browser, it will still be viewable. Standards also make it easier for people with disabilities to view websites. Content that may be specific to the needs of disabled persons can easily be hid from those that don't require it.
So why should you switch your current browser? Simply because you're not getting everything out of the web that you could be. Though you may be able to view the content on sites, you won't be able to see the design. With a new browser you will be able to see sites using this technique as well as old sites just the same. New browsers also allow more user control. User defined styles that allow custom sizing and coloring of text, making it easier for vision impaired users to read content. More and more designers are using pure CSS design techniques, and more and more users are using standard-compliant browsers to see the creativity that was once impossible for designers to accomplish.
I could list a million reasons why someone should change to a standard compliant browser, but why don't you just give it a try? If you feel up to it, my personal pick is Firefox. It's easy to install, and is compatible with most popular operating systems. Check the system requirements to see if your computer can handle it. It's a about a 20 minute download for Windows, and 40 minutes for Linux and Mac OS X. Did I forget to mention that it is free? Well it is. So give it a spin.
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