Question: I heard that as long as a page validates, it will always display correctly across browsers. I find that hard to believe because I know padding, for example, is dealt with differently by different browsers. So even if a page validates correctly, one browser might not show it correctly? 

A basic example is padding. Doesn't IE6 deal with padding differently and therefore is the reason for specific stylesheets for Internet Explorer? And if so, is there any way to be 100% sure that a site will look the same across all browsers?

**UPDATE**

I'm fairly sure that it can't be gaurenteed 100%. But is there one example that I can use to prove this? AS I mentioned, I think padding is dealt with differently, but how?

Answer: 
No it doesn't mean that your website will look the same across all browsers, all it means is that you have adhered to the standards. And that **if** - and only **if** - all browsers implement all the standards exactly according to the standards, that your site will then look exactly the same across all browsers. The reality is that not all browsers have always adhered perfectly to all the standards. Therefore, it does not mean that your site will look the same in all browsers. 

Newer version of browsers have adhered more and more to the standards, so they're on the right track, but especially older versions of browsers, and to be even more specific, Microsoft's older versions of browsers, have not really adhered to the standards.
No. [Validation is a formal thing](http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/validation.html) and does not guarantee even conformance to a specification, still less “looking the same”, which isn’t even something that the specifications require or recommend.

(“HTML5 validation” is partly different, namely running undocumented checks against some unknown versions of a mutable draft or “living standard”. But surely it does not guarantee anything like “looking the same”.)