Web Standards
Why Care ... What To Do?
User Experience Group, Fry Inc.
Overview
- A brief history of front-end coding and the "browser wars"
- Some definitions of and around "Web Standards"
- The business case for Web Standards
- Selling Web Standards
- Impacts on Creative
In The Recent Past...
- "Web Standards" codified in 1999, but not supported by browsers
- Since 1999: IE Supremacy, un-fussiness = no consequences to no standards
- Designer/Brand Owner fussiness = pixel-perfect layouts
..And Still Today
- Pixel-perfect layouts, "image text" typography
Looking Good?
- Through a dizzying array of table tricks, transparent spacer images, and JavaScript hacks, we found a way to make things look great to the human eye through the window of a graphical web browser without worrying about what everything looked like under the hood.
-Mike Davidson, ESPN.com
- Webstandards.org recently noted that of the more than fifty Webby Award winners this year, only 1 site had valid presentation code
-James Lewen, ITworld.com May 2004
Webstandards: Bare Essentials
Separation of Concerns
- Style or decoration is applied externally, kept separate from content
Semantic Markup
- Content is structured and tagged to enhance the ability of machines to "understand" content and context
Conformity
- Code is well-formed and will "validate"
Early Standards Boost: SEO
- SEO "discovers" semantic markup factor in Google relevancy algorithm(s)
Standards Boost 2: Blogs
- Bloggers' ethos of easy re-use and re-distribution of "content" pushes wider adoption of Web Standards
- Blog software provides first examples of robust standards-compliant CMS
- Blog Explosion: 58% jump in blog readership in 2004 to 32 million
High Profile Early Adopters
- Late 2002: WIRED.com Redesign
- March 2003: FastCompany.com Redesign
- March 2003: ESPN.com Redesign
Current Events
- Jul 2004: NY AG vs. Ramada and Priceline
- Oct 2004: UK Disabled Discrimination Act
- Q1 2005: 25+ million Firefox downloads, 11% penetration
- Summer 2005: IE 7.0 beta, no support for CSS 2.0 standard
Compliance Or Else?
- Businesses who launch new websites subsequent to this ruling will likely be targets for lawsuits given that precedent has been set. Ensuring WCAG compliance prior to launch will not only save money, but will reduce legal bills.
- Alttags.org
- Standards Compliance is at the heart of Accessibility and forms part of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
-Thepollenshop.co.uk
Biz Case for Standards
- Accessibility
- Faster Development
- Future Browser/Device Compatibility
- Easier Maintainence/Redesign/Re-use/A-B Testing
- Less Code, Clean Code, Fast Code
Less Code = Immediate ROI
- Typical file size savings = 35%
- A company with "tag soup" page code now paying $160,000 a year for bandwidth could save $56,000 by adopting Web Standards
Problems With Standards
- Can CMS comply with standards, spit out valid code?
- Can site owner's updates via the CMS happen within standards?
- Can clients be OK with N.E.T.S.E.A. ?
- Can staff retrain/relearn without huge disruption to its processes?
Impacts on Creative
- Layouts not chained to a table-based grid(s)
- Borders and shadows in the code, not in the assets
- Designers have to be OK with N.E.T.S.E.A.
- Designers might have to hang out in new neighborhoods
Now's The Time?
- Fortunately, we're at the point now where CSS-based designs are almost expected for any new and redesigned site. The Web standards case has been made, many reputable companies are on the bandwagon, the practice has been refined, and there are endless examples and resources available.
-France Rupert, Interaction Designer, Sprint.com
