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The_Importance_of_Web_Standards
| The Importance of Web Standards
Welcome to our website; unless of course you’re
blind, dyslexic, using a screen reader, magnification software,
text-based browser, webTV, cell phone, or PDA, running Linux,
Unix, BEos, Solaris, OS2 or FreeBSD, or haven’t updated your
browser in the last year or so. You’re not important to us.
Is that a message you’d proudly display on your company
homepage? The truth is, if you’re not using web standards, this
is what you’re saying to roughly 20% of internet users.
I know you’re probably asking “what are web standards?” Well,
web standards are nothing more than recommendations put forth by
the w3c in an attempt to standardize the web. Standards are
“best practices” for coding to ensure usability by all modern
web browsers, and guarantee forward compatibility.
Often times, converting to standards compliant code requires
nothing more than using CSS instead of font tags, writing
properly nested HTML, and not using any browser-specific code
(like < blink > or .innerHTML).
And the good news is, the w3c offers a code validator at http://validator.w3.org
Still need a reason to write standards compliant code? Lets look
at some statistics.
As of June 2005 , only 72% of internet users were browsing with
a current version of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Also as of June, there were 203,000,000 internet users in
America. Is your IE only website is saying “I don’t want your
business” to more than 54 million Americans?
Do you use IE only JavaScript or browser detection in your site,
have a flash based intro page, use a popup for content, or font
tags? Is your site done in FrontPage? Do you use inline frames?
If so, you’re not only refusing visitors but you’re wasting
money too.
By using web standards, the typical FrontPage website can be
reduced from 60k to 20k, thus only using 1/3 of your bandwidth.
Simply removing the depreciated font and center tags and
switching to an external CSS file can reduce a 30k website down
to 15 or 20k. Not only will this drastically increase your
website’s speed, but it’ll also save you money on hosting and
make your pages more attractive to search engines.
Using ECMAscript instead of the browser specific JavaScript or
Jscript will not only assure your code will work in all future
browsers, but it will stop you from paying developers to code IE
and Netscape specific versions of your website.
What’s that, you haven’t heard of ECMAscript? Chances are your
web developer hasn’t either. ECMAscript is the cross browser
standard version of JavaScript; it’s been around since 1988.
You don’t see gas stations that only sell gas for Toyotas, so
why do we design websites that only work in Internet Explorer?
Much of the problem stems from the fact that we tend to view the
web as print. It’s not. Different users will see different
things, let them; just make sure your site works in all
browsers. I’ve seen a lot of pretty websites in IE that just
don’t work at all in Firefox or Lynx.
Are aesthetics so important that they’re worth alienating 20% of
your potential customers?
About the author:
bout the Author: Ryan Jones is a University of Michigan graduate
who is currently working as a web developer. He runs several
popular websites (including his Internet Slang Translator at www.noslang.com ), and has
authored articles for many more. You can learn more about Ryan,
his websites, and interests at http://design.thehockeygod.com
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