Web Standards
What are web standards?
Web standards are technologies, established by the World Wide Web Consortium, commonly referred to as the "W3C" and other standards bodies, that are used to create and interpret web-based content. These technologies are designed to future-proof documents published on the Web and to make those documents accessible to as many as possible.
Simply put, web standards are practices such as structural planning, presentational design, object and scripting languages to benefit your users, your clients and you. Gone are the days of bloated font-end code. Today's techniques for making your websites work are leaner, smarter and far more cost effective.
How do web standards work?
Web standards govern a wide range of technologies such as XML, DOM and ECMAScript. The most common, however, relates to the use of HTML (Hyper-Text Mark-up Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). These standards are aimed at providing authoring (coding) guidelines so that content can be viewed consistently across multiple user agents (Web browsers, mobile devices and other upcoming Internet devices such as automobiles and/or home appliances).
Why should I care about Web standards?
Web standards can save time and money and provide a better experience to the website's visitors. Let's look at using Web standards from a business perspective:
- Simplifies development and maintenance
Shorter development and maintenance times not only reduce costs, but free up development resources sooner, thereby increasing opportunity. - Compatibility for greater accessibility
Web standards reduce the risk of future website visitors missing your website's full experience. In other words, not everyone uses the same computer and Web browser as you. By adhering to Web standards, you ensure your website will look and function the same across many different computers and Web browsers. - Increased search engine rankings
Search engines such as Google evaluate the ratio of content-to-code when ranking websites based on keyword relevance. Lots of content is good, lots of code is bad. Since Web standards compliant websites encapsulate layout code in separate files, your content-to-code ratio increases. As a result, search engines are likely to rank your standards compliant website higher than other poorly coded competitors. - Reduced overall cost
By using Web standards to structure the front-end of your website, you decrease the site's overall file size. Compared to the bloated websites of the past, this in turn will reduce the cost of keeping your website online and reduce download times for your website users. - Improved user experience
How many times have you visited a website only to wait for it to fully load into your Web browser? Perhaps until you've given up and moved on to somewhere else on the Web. These days, an individual's online patience is overlooked. The average user wants their online experience faster and more convienient. Web standards is the solution. By using clean, unbloated front-end code, your website becomes more user friendly which translates into richer experiences for your visiters.
Why aren't all websites standards compliant?
During the popularization of the Internet in the late nineties, Web browser vendors such as Internet Explorer and Netscape failed to agree on authoring standards for Web content. The demand for richer looking websites, however, lead to coding practices that were inefficient, unreliable and plain messy. This lead to sites full of bloated and confusing font-end code which still today plague many parts of the Intenet.
