Standards are just that – standard. Some browsers are not consistent about meeting the standards. But that’s a problem with those browsers, not with the Standards. Program to the standards, and most things will work properly in most browsers. And the other browsers will catch up, eventually.
P.S. If you concentrate on content, not on appearance, you will rarely have to worry about kludgey workarounds. These mostly happen on the bleeding edge, using the newest features.
I know what standards are. I’m not complaining about standards as they exist, what matters is how they are displayed. If they don’t display like you want them to, if they are not consistent, standards mean nothing.
The websites I work on, though I wouldn’t class them as bleeding edge as such, they do use some relatively modern technologies to operate, and our minimum specs have to be recent updates.
So your gripe is with browsers? Which is exactly what everyone is saying?
And now, boys and girls, which browser chooses to ignore the most standards, and is therefore the most inpredictable and most difficult to write for without becoming incompatible? Yeeeeesssss, well done, it’s …(I don’t need to say, do I?)