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Web Standards

Without standards the internet could not function at all. At the same time, the internet is a hugely competitive environment with innovation occurring all the time. The browser wars of the late nineties was a case in point. Primarily Microsoft and Netscape were adding new features to their web browsers willy nilly. Extra functions for users were not a problem, but many features enabled web site builders to do fancy things with the way sites looked or worked, but only if the person visiting the site had the right browser.

The problem was that if you ran a web site you had to do things one way for this kind of browser, and another way for another browser. There was also quirky behaviour with browsers (many would even say bugs) especially with MS Internet Explorer as version 5 does many things differently to 5.5 and 6 does things differently to the other two.

It was getting to the point that you had to have a dozen different computers running different operating systems and versions of browsers just to test if your web site looked right or worked properly on most of them. Imagine a world where every brand of TV had to have a special transmission. There would be one transmission for Sony TVs, and a different transmission for Panasonic TVs, and another for Grundig and so on.

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) which had established many of the standards that made the internet work in the first place worked with companies throughout the industry to create new web standards which defined exactly how web languages should be used so that the code could be written once and all browsers could use it in the same way and get the same results. The standards also sought to solve many other technical and practical issues at the same time. XHTML and CSS are the key components of web standards (but there is a lot more to it that just these two things).

Although web standards are quite a technical issue, there are real world implications for anyone who owns a web site. Complying to standards enables sites to be created more cost effectively since they only have to be tested once. The content of sites can be accessed more universally on desktop web browsers, on portable devices and specialist readers. It enables better indexing of web content so that search engines are able to find information more accurately.

Sadly even though Microsoft is a member of the W3C, agreed to the web standards and has the technical and financial ability to implement them, they have to date been one of the worst implementers of the standards and Internet Explorer is one of the least compliant browsers. The main reason is that web standards level the playing field and because Microsoft have the biggest share of browsers in use, it gives them a commercial advantage to be different and not follow standards.

This makes things a bit trickier when making a site because the site has to follow web standards and it also has to work on Internet Explorer.

We firmly believe in the value of web standards and even though there is some extra effort involved in working to the standard rather than simply doing things the Internet Explorer way, this pays dividends in the long run.

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