User Attuned User AttunedWeb Standards might be a buzz term for now, but it will fall into place in the foreseeable future, not as a magic formula for good web design, but as a vital part of the web designers tool set.
Believe it or not, there is more to designing a website than making it look good when displayed in a web-surfers browser window. This article attempts to explain to the client, not the designer, the importance of web standards—defined below.
It is a term web designers know well and use often. But to most people, it is meaningless. There is a simple definition of the term, but it can also embody a more complicated way to design.
Using layman–friendly language, starting in the infancy of the concept (What are these standards you speak of?), I will explain the what & why of web standards.
Web standards is a buzz term, in most cases, used to describe the W3C Recommendation. The W3C is an organization that makes recommendations about how web sites should be built. There is no law requiring compliance to these standards (as with the standards in some other industries), but the recommendations are there for a few reasons, like maximizing scalability, accessibility, usability, and extensibility. Huh? What? Who? Please keep the faith, Reader; this is going to be easier than you think.
Lately, the focus of the recommendation has been proper use of markup, seperation of content and appearance, and the use of universal languages, like XML. But the longterm goals are the above mentioned …ilities:
This applies to more than just adding content to a website. Changing common elements or design traits on many pages across a site are also important and can also fall under this category. This equation is simple, sites that are not scalable take more time and/or money to edit.
One particular lawsuit, whether it was truly warranted or not, is a benchmark moment for web standards. A blind advocacy group filed lawsuit against the retailer, Target because Target's website alledgedly was inaccessible for the blind. Most people, unaware of the fact that web site publishers are required to take blind web surfers into consideration (we still are not sure if they are required to do so), might be somewhat bewildered by this event. But it is true that certain methods of web design, when put into practice, make a site more accesible by users that have disabilities—not just blindness, by the way. In case you are wondering, as of this writing, the outcome of the lawsuit is yet to be determined.
This is a measurement of how easy and efficient a website is to use. Actually this term transcends computer applications. Your car, toaster, tennis shoes, and can-opener should all be subjected to some of the same questions. Like: Can a user of this item accomplish what he/she wishes easily and efficiently? Or how often does a user make a mistake when using this item? Buttons on a site should be easy to find, the longer it takes a user to find what she is looking for, the more likely she is to give up and leave.
Stolen straight from the acronym XML (or vis versa), this term refers to the ability of data to be used in more ways than one, without changing the data itself. A illustration of this concept would be a comparrison of the way a web browser, like Internet Explorer, treats a heading, and how a spider, like Googlebot treats a heading. In a web browser, a heading is displayed in a bigger, bolder font, and maybe a different color, than the other text on the page. A spider is a search engine program that catalogs information about the internet. Rather than displaying the heading in a larger font, it will put the heading in a list of keywords that it uses to find the site later on.
Once it has been explained what standards are, it is not hard to discern why they should be used. Or, at least, so it would seem. But many designers fail to put web standards into practice.
Actually, what really is interesting about standards compliance is that, in this day and age, the higher profile the website, it seems, the less it conforms to web standards. This is probably due, in part, to the fact that large companies choose the designers that have been in the business the longest and have the most experience. Unfortunately, these designers are often (but by no means always) the ones that have the most out-dated techniques. In the 90s, most web designers had never heard of standards, and weren't aware that the W3C was developing and publishing recommendations.
The W3C really doesn't wield any power. The web standards are hardly standards at all, they are recommendations. Advocates of the W3C's guidelines might have nothing to stand on when it comes to predicting consequences; a site that does not comply is not necessarily a legal or financial liability. But the recommendation is meant to be a best practices approach. Meaning legal and financial pitfalls are more likely avoided when standards are taken into consideration.
Those of us that comply to web standards do so even though it is not required because it is useful. While it might be a buzz term for now, web standards will fall into place in the foreseeable future, not as a magic formula for good web design, but as a vital part of the web designers tool set—a set of guidelines, developed by the experts on web technologies. The best thing a designer can do now, is recognize the standards for what they are—recommendations, not what they are hyped up to be. But to ignore them is a mistake and will surely prove unwise as the web continues to mature.
I am a freelance graphic designer and web developer. I own and operate the UADev website as a sort of notebook to hold links, thoughts, portfolio snapshots, WiPs, and information for clients. Design is my journey. UADev is my notebook.
Under Construction. The site is going to be even better next time you come. So visit frequently.
© Copyright 2006 Tyler Szabo 
Denver, CO, USA