“In compliance with what?” you may ask. The answer to non-compliance is found in the browser wars which ended with the meteoric rise of Microsoft® Internet Explorer and the near demise of the original Mosaic Browser which had morphed into the Netscape® Communicator browser. The war was over browser capabilities and features requiring “special” code (html tags, java script, java, etc.) to display browser-proprietary features such as “scrolling text.” 
This was not what the inventor (not Al Gore but Tim Berners Lee) of the World Wide Web had in mind. He wanted the WWW to be a place where information could be shared “democratically” regardless of computer platform and browsers used to display the information.
To that end Jim Berners Lee formed the World Wide Web Consortium – W3C. The purpose of the W3C was to continue the development of OPEN standards to lead the Web to its full potential. Think multimedia, non-latin characters, people with disabilities, backward interoperability, etc. W3C members include the who’s who of technology companies. While most of these members agree on the goal of OPEN standards, too many of the members’ web sites fail the compliance test and people in the know point the finger at Microsoft (“does not play well with others”).
“Why should I care if my site is compliant?” The short answer is longevity and productivity – the ability to change and update a site’s content AND design with relative ease. Longer answers are available at the W3C and here. Another answer I’ve found is that search engines appear to prefer standard-compliant websites. Here is the link to test if the HTML code of a website is compliant: W3C Validation. If you use Firefox® and the Web Developer extension (my other blog) you can test both online and local pages. Also see Mary McKnight’s outstanding blog in which she mentions validation as her pet peeve.
You ask: “As a real estate agent (mortgage broker, appraiser, etc.), why should I care to know these things?” Because the Internet’s importance for communication will not diminish and the more you know about it the better you will serve your customer.
Finally, just in case you are going to test my own website to see if I do as I say, you will be disappointed. My home page does not conform to W3C standards because I use by necessity some HTML code from the Northwest Multiple Website which is Microsoft-centric and can’t be displayed properly by any other browser. So much for OPEN standards.
© 2006, Gerhard N. Ade
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