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Web Design Standards Compliance

Welcome to the Thomas Multimedia Web Design Blog!
First Topic: Web Design Standards

While this topic might sound boring already, there are some good reasons why websites should be developed to comply with web design standards. Web standards are created and modified by a group called the W3C.
The W3C, AKA the World Wide Web Consortium are an organisation that has been around since 1994, fine tuning how website language should be written. They are the recognised authority on web languages.

Some common languages can be used to create virtually any website or application. You may have heard of HTML. HTML is the predecessor to the recommended XHTML. Other languages include CSS which controls the style of a website and XML/RSS which can be use to syndicate content across different sites.

The benefit of writing a web standards compliant website are many;

• cross-browser compatability: The website will display correctly in all web browsers (eg. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Opera). This may seem a non-issue… doesn’t everyone use Internet Explorer anyway? Well the short answer is NO! More on the crimes of Internet Explorer later but in short they have made little effort to enforce the official web standards.
• cross-platform compatability: As the internet moves onto new platforms such as handheld-PC’s, mobile phones and other strange and not so strange appliances (think fridges), they need and should have a common language whereby the same site will render correctly.
• Performance: The less work the device has to do working out how to display the web page, the quicker it can do it! This can only be achieved with standard languages

It is alarming to note that the vast majority of websites would be in trouble if overnight internet browsers became 100% standards compliant. What’s more, Internet Explorer 7 (soon to be released) is set to make some substantial updates to its compliance level, and will likely leave many website owners wondering what happened to there website display next time Windows Update upgrades their system.

Unfortunately applications like Microsoft Frontpage have abused the web design standards for some time, as well as many content management systems. Microsoft seems to think that they can make up their own standards to the detriment of the entire internet. They have lost that battle, and expect to see many display quirks in the near future.

Is your site compliant with the latest W3C guidelines? Thomas Multimedia takes the obligation to write website language according to the standards that have been set out by the W3C seriously. You can be confident of future compatability if your site has been written correctly.

This article was published on October 9, 2006 and filed under Web Design

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