This is super news. I am glad to see MSN jumping onboard with the rest of the major portals. Even though it took them awhile, at least they are catching up.

MSN launched a new homepage today that boasts a completely CSS-based layout, accessibility features, stripped-down markup that’s friendly to mobile devices, a theme switcher, and a total of only 2 validation errors. With this launch, MSN joins a host of other major commercial sites that have embraced web standards, including Yahoo, AOL, ABC News, Wired and ESPN, to name a few.

One notable thing that sets the MSN homepage redesign apart from the others I named is the paltry number of validation errors. I know validation isn’t everything, but still, when you’ve got ESPN topping out the list with a whopping 1910 errors, and MSN has 2? That’s impressive, no matter how you cut it.

A word of warning: if you’re like me, the first thing you do when you visit a web site is view the source. Well, good luck dissecting MSN’s; they’ve removed all the whitespace, so it’s damn near impossible to read. But that’s where Web Developer and X-Ray come in handy. Be sure to view the site with styles disabled.

Hopefully this move by MSN will be another nail in the coffin of the myth that web standards aren’t realistic for large sites. If Yahoo wasn’t the final nail, perhaps this can be! Source: thecssweblog

Tags: msn, x-ray, validation, web standards