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Indeed, validators only do so much. The engine you mention is not usable. The reason is simple. It is a browser engine, not an ePub engine.
Some specifications in the ePub format are not in a browser engine and vice versa.
They are not stupid, but just don't want to do it. Apparently it is not as simple as it seems.
I would not be surprised if some publishers do not use validators. Don't forget, most publishers are not that happy with e-books. It is an afterthought and the larger publishers would love to see it fail.
There are only two validators at present. The first one is epubcheck. Do a search on the forum. You can really pass garbage through that one without any comment.
The other one is FlightCrew. That one is better, but I can imagine that also through that one garbage can be validated.
If you create a 'normal' book, following the standards and best practices as can be found all around the forum, it will look almost the same on most readers. What do I mean with a 'normal' book? Simple: cover, TOC, headings, paragraphs (with or without indents), dropcaps perhaps, some images, simple formating, things like that. Should serve most books.
Where do problems arise? From what I have seen centering images, floats and more obscure options in CSS. By obscure I mean less used. The centering images is the most stupid one. That one happens on the i-devices and aldiko for sure.
As long as the reader supports CSS, it should look the same.
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