Web Standards

What are Web Standards?

Web Standards are a set of guidelines set down by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is an organisation that develops specifications and makes recommendations regarding the internet. They developed web standards in order to keep the web accessible to all.

You may have come across sites that state "Best viewed in Netscape 6 at a screen resolution of 800 x 600", or "Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.5". This often means that features of the website will only work properly when viewed in certain browsers. Sometimes it means that a designer has only tested their website in one browser, rather than making sure it works well any of them. Either way, these notices are an indication that the web designer did not have web standards in mind when the site was created.

Certain browsers have added extra features that are not part of the usual specifications. This may be an attempt to make them more appealing to users, but the real reasons are best known to the companies that make browsers. Web designers who make use of these extra features will be denying the full impact of their pages to visitors with different browsers.

Good web developers make web pages that validate. This means that they will work in newer, standards-compliant browsers, and on older browsers the code is designed to "degrade gracefully", so that the content of the page will be available even if the appearance differs slightly.

An example of not using web standards

For example, there is a background effect exclusive to Microsoft, that makes gradient backgrounds. This is the code:

body {
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(gradientType=0,startColorStr=black,endColorStr=teal);
}

And this is the effect in Internet Explorer, using white text to contrast with the background:

In Internet Explorer the gradient background makes the white text clearly visible

In Internet Explorer the gradient background makes the white text clearly visible

Unfortunately, in other browsers such as Mozilla, this background effect simply doesn't work and the text is entirely invisible:

The white text is invisible in Mozilla because the gradient background does not appear

The white text is invisible in Mozilla because the gradient background does not appear

The Advantages of Web Standards

The advantages of developing a website that is standards-compliant include making it accessible to more people, at any time. Many people feel offended by the suggestion that their screen resolution or choice of browser is incorrect, and notices to that effect only alienate people. Webmasters can put their screen space to far better use. Although today most people are using versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape and AOL, the picture could be very different in a year's time. The whole point of web standards is building sites for everybody, not just a group of people who are using a particular technology.