For any of the website savvy people out there in the internets.

I've been out of the html/webdesign loop for quite a while. I still know my basic orders with things, but there is a lot of 'new' crap that's come around since I worked on anything.

Namely, this W3C validator thingy (apparently, this is a real word, as Firefox doesn't underline it)... I'm not in the smarts with this new fangled technology bullchips apparently, because I have no REAL idea its purpose.

I ran a website I am making through it.... Not too shappy, it picked a couple things up I missed, but there were a few errors it pointed out that I kinda just felt STUPID because I had NO IDEA wtf it was talking about. DOCTYPE, Charset, etc.. Those things Dreamweaver and such add to a page... Left me kinda confused.

Let me sum up my question really...

Should I CARE? Honestly? Should I give a damn what this validator thingy is saying in the long run. I mean... I can understand the small time error checking, but in the grand scheme of things, can't I just make sure a webpage works on both Firefox and IE... (And others whenever I can test them) and be done with it?

Right now, the page I designed works perfectly in both Firefox 3.5.2 and IE7 (or do I have 8 now, I dunno...) Do I need to pay attention to this, or is it one of those 'ish posh, we need more organizations on the webs' snotty things? Really... I wanna know.