If you are a seasoned web designer, you have been creating sites that use web standards for nearly a decade (measured in dog-like web time). If you are a cutting edge web agency, you are showcasing your knowledge already. If you are a high profile web site, your brand new redesign has just placed you at the forefront of web design and peers and competitors are just following suit. If you are a newly born blogger, lucky you, most blogs out there will provide standard-compliant templates. If you are about to design your first web site without any preconceived knowledge of HTML, just make sure you don't pick the wrong book and start learning.
But what if you are in none of the above situations, like for example managing a corporate site with tons of content lovingly hand-crafted or FrontPaged over the years with every single proprietary goodies and hacks your webmasters or IT developers have found to work in the browser they happened to like? Chances are that, although you know the rationale and benefits of switching to standards, the journey looks far from appealing.
Story in progress, le prochain épisode is cooking...