Some years ago, the Internet saw various web browsers begin to implement propriety features into their products, in order to give themsleves the edge over their competition.
The problem was that many of these exclusive features resulted in inconsistencies in the display of websites across different browsers – Internet Explorer had different ways of calculating widths and margins than Firefox, even each new version of Internet Explorer had its own little nuances or ‘quirks’. At worst, a website that looked great in Firefox would simply fall apart in Internet Explorer. At best, it certainly would not look the way the designer intended.
Needless to say, this was an absolute nightmare for web designers and incredibly frustrating for web users. Sure, technical workarounds and fixes emerged out of the fog for designers to get things looking ‘just right’ across different browsers. However, it meant a lot more work was required to achieve such – work that was often reflected in the cost of a website.
In acknowledgement of this increasing problem, Tim Berners Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web, stepped in and established the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The W3C introduced Web Standards in order to promote cross-browser consistency and web accessibility; the idea being that browsers that were not standards compliant would suffer in the marketplace, due to their incompatibility. Firefox immediately jumped on board, their browser versions have been standards compliant for quite some time now. Internet Explorer is slowly coming to the party, their latest browser, IE8, is their best effort at producing a standards compliant browser yet.
Sure, invalid websites still work just fine – in older browers that is. This is why you see the “compatability view” button (next to the “refresh” button) in IE8. When one hovers over this button with the cursor the little prompt reads:
“websites designed for older browsers will often look better and problems such as out-of-place menus, images, or text will be corrected”.
Yeah, sure. Compatible with older versions of Internet Explorer maybe. But, certainly not web standards compatible. “Incompatibility view” would be a more appropriate name for this function, which is what it really is. Then again, we can’t have Microsoft admitting their prior reluctance to support the very medium they have dominated over for so long now can we?
In any event, websites that validate as standards compliant now stand themselves in much better stead than those that do not.
By comparison, standards compliant websites:
- Are far more accessible – for people and search engines both. Good luck getting your draconian table-based website indexed properly.
- Are less bulky in file size – load times and load costs are decreased.
- Shorten development time – older non-standards compliant browsers are becoming obsolete, therefore lessening the need to cater for them in web site development.
- Lower maintenance costs – due to the lean, crisp markup required for standards compliancy, valid files are easier for designers to work on.
- Are future proof – web standards are fast becoming just that – the standard of the web. Now that the jump has been made, future versions of web browsers will continue to support standards compliancy, meaning standards compliant websites are readily adaptable to future developments.
These benefits are obviously a boon for both web designers and their clients, accesibility in particular.
Aside from your website being accessibile for people with disabilities, a standards compliant website is also one that a search engine crawler will have no trouble indexing the content of. This means the information your site has to offer is returned to the search engine in its entirety.
A more thorough indexing leads to a more thorough listing which in turn, leads to higher search engine visibility and more visitors. More visitors means more potential customers / clients.