Web Standards Are Still Important

There is a lot of heated discussion amongst web designers and developers about web standards, their meaning and importance. Some people say they are used mainly to show off that you really master HTML and CSS. Some people say web standards have already been talked about for too long, everything about them have already been written down and they have been already been accepted by a majority of designers and developers.

None of that is true. It’s 2008 and I still see most websites lacking even the most fundamental principles of web standards - tabled layout (still widely used) being just the tip of the iceberg. There is more than just passing HTML and CSS validators when it comes to web standards. Accessibility is a primary objective. But what does accessibility actually mean?

Usability

Accessibility means usability. Not only does it mean a standards compliant website is accessible to people with disabilities. A standards compliant website is also well understood by people using unusual browsers - from voice browsers (reading web pages aloud to people with sight impairments) and Braille browsers (translating text into Braille) to hand-held browsers with just a little monitor space (such as PDAs, modern cellphones, pagers etc).

Accessibility is a crucial factor for commercial websites. For a businessman, it doesn’t make any sense to restrict access to his site. Denying even a small part of a possible audience can negatively influence a final profit margin. For a website looking for an international audience, accessibility turns to be an important factor, too. It is important to make the website accessible even to people in regions with poorly developed infrastructure, who might be using outdated or just text-mode WWW browsers.

Maintainable And Future Proof

Accessible means maintainable. Web standards are designed with forward and backward compatibility in mind. This means that while data using old versions of the standards will continue to work flawlessly in new browsers, data using new versions of the standards will produce an acceptable result in older and/or unusual browsers. A website may go through several designers and developers during its lifetime. Web standards guarantee that future designers and developers will be able to easily comprehend the code and pick up where the former ones left. All of the abovementioned is directly resulting in less or very likely no maintainance at all.

A standard compliant website is future proof. Web standards guarantee that your standards compliant website will remain accessible in a near or further future, or even forever if needed. In addition, you will save lots of time and money for debugging, troubleshooting and future modifications of the site.

Quality

Accessibility implies quality. It’s quite simple logic. When a designer takes a time and makes a website standards compliant, it implies that he or she really does care about the outcome of his or her own work. Following the standards while designing a website will result in overall better quality code, often the site will load faster, it will be cross-browser compatible, user-friendly and easy to modify.

Search Engines Like Web Standards

Web standards are beneficial for SEO (see SEO Explained), too. Complying with the standards guarantees better position in SERPs. Standards compliant content gets indexed more accurately due to the structural information present in it.

Search engine crawlers often gets confused by syntax errors and thus sometimes pages that do not pass validation are not indexed or get indexed incorrectly. Furthermore, standards compliant code can be easily converted into other formats (databases or Word documents) and it allows easier migration to other new systems such as PDAs or cellphones, too.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

And who stands behind the standards? Web standards are not some irrefragable laws invented by ivory tower wizards. They are decided by the same people who use them - browser makers, web developers, content providers and others.

Most of the standards come from the W3 Consortium. The W3C is an international consortium where member organizations (IBM, Microsoft, America Online, Apple, Adobe, Macromedia, Sun Microsystems and others), a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards in order to enhance the interoperability of web related applications. The mission of W3C is:

To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.