OT: Web Standards

[Kent West <westk@nicanor.acu.edu>]

Sorry for the Off Topic post, but I have a lot of confidence in the 
opinions/knowledge of the folks on this list.

I am not a web developer; know next to nothing about it.

I have a co-worker who is developing some web pages. I've encouraged him 
to pass his work through the W3C HTML validator. He says it fails, and 
that if he recodes to pass, his work appears differently on different 
browsers. For example, he has two frames next to each other that he 
wants to have look like one piece, but Netscape 6.x puts a buffer around 
each frame unless he inserts a non-W3C-approved tag, so that there's a 
gulf between the two frames.

So my question is this:
	Are the W3C standards insufficient to allow the web
	designers to do what they need to do, or is my
	co-worker missing a technique that he needs to know?

In other words, are the W3C standards sufficient to provide a 
browser-agnostic world, with all the features that designers need? Or 
does the W3C-approved label simply mean that the page is coded to the 
least common denominator, and is therefore not practical for 
PHB-oriented web sites?

Thanks!

Kent