Give me Web Standards or give the Internet death

The truth has always been there

Web standards have always been there since the very inception of the Internet. Standards are the basis upon which the inter-connected networks that we call the Internet are a able to connect and relay information between each other. It is therefor surprising that those of us that are responsible for developing and designing websites have for so-long avoided, and even shunned the idea that implementing web standards is an important if not the most important factor in ensuring that content remains accessible, and that the Internet continues to grow. Lack of standards leads into a tower of babel with relatively isolated groups based on proprietary technologies unable to exchange information. A good example of this is the inability of any PC owner to access windows-update without having Microsoft's Internet Explorer Activex Controls. There are many examples of such technology islands that have their own share of examples.

Constant arm-twisting from IE zealots

After the defeat of the largely standards compliant Netscape 4.x by Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the browser wars of the early 2000s, things seemed so bad for anyone interested in a standards compliant Internet because of IE's dominance and it's disregard for established standards in favour of strategic business advantage. Since that time and upto the very recent past, trying to develop or enforce Web Standards often felt like evangelizing a marginal opinion with little support.

Revelation of what really matters

With time, it has become clear that disregard for standards for the short-term benefit of developing and using slightly advanced proprietary technology does not benefit anyone. The rise of XML, J2EE and web services in cross platform and technology neutral information exchange helped prove that standards make the Internet.

Less work in the long-run -Being standards compliant especially in developing web-sites and web applications has the benefit of making it easy to create and update web-sites while ensuring that these production will remain compatible with existing and future standards based technologies.

Do not sell your soul

All this seems to be good, but in the real world, there are pressures and circumstances that make it difficult to realistically adhere to web standards. For instance, in the layout and presentation of web-site content using CSS and XHTML, the interpretation of these languages is not uniform across browsers and even across versions of some browser families. While building a web application, I came to the painful realization that in order to be web standards compliant, but still be able to cater for a majority of my client's audience, I had to use a number of hacks to cater for Internet Explorer version 6 and below, while keeping IE7 in mind. Much as Microsoft has finally started building compliant browsers, they have done so in a peace-meal fashion. This means that IE7 is behaves like both IE6 and Firefox depending on the situation. Twisting myself out of shape to cater for a non standards compliant majority browser is only justifiable because the client has objectives that I must meet; and my personal or professional ideals are secondary

A few good men and women

In the increasingly frequent occasion when one finds a client that wants a completely standards compliant web-site, it is with ease and joy that web standards conscious developers and designers accept such a project. Such projects are easier to develop because they take advantage of the inbuilt development, presentation and maintenance efficiencies of web standards while saving the often long hours spent on making adjustments to cater for non-compliant media (browsers). Also, standards compliant code make it easy for the client to adapt the content and structure for use with other presentation media such as aural web browsers, hand-held devices (PocketPC, Palm, Blackberry, Mobile/cellular telephones and other non-traditional screen sizes).

Web producers and development managers have the onus to recommend and enforce web standards for their sanity (in the short-term) and that of their clients in the long-term. I must mention a few from the growing number of web standards evangelists that have given encouragement and reason to others who are working to make the Internet web standards compliant one <tag> at a time.