Web Standards Lie?

Agreed, I never talk of webstandard either, I have that when I was a total quality consultant : you can do quality without prounouncing the word, same with web standards. Emphasis on the benefits (what it means for the client) is what is best to convince. The client doesn’t care about how it’s done, but what added value there is...

Edit : I have actually read the 3 articles. Although I don’t agree with him, he is quite good at wording his take on things. He might even convince a few people, but I think his case is a gross caricature of what modern webdesign is about. While some people are single minded standards adepts, those are the exception rather than the rule... invalidating most of his argument.

Quote from: rthrash at Jul 13, 2006, 11:15 AM

Jeff’s company is the guy paying the bill. Jeff knows and understands, though.

Oh, damn, do I ever! You would be absolutely amazed at how many people still do not know what web standards are. And I’m not talking about just your average business owner/manager either...I’m talking about even among web developers and project managers. I got into an argument with a project manager from a web development company regarding standards-based development. This particular person didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about. Think about it...a project manager! You would think that a project manager would be well informed about the latest trends and practices in the web development community, right? Apparently not.

The problem of adopting more modern approaches to web design and development seem to stem mostly from a lack of knowledge. Granted, the original problem has always been the support withing the different web browsers and devices. But, these days, many of the original problems with browser support have all but disappeared. What alot of developers fail to realize is that the use of current CSS-based layouts really depends on the audience. If the majority of your visitors are using IE6, Firefox, and Safari, why wouldn’t you use a standards-based approach and ditch the table-based layout? And what about search engine visability and accessibility? Granted, although it’s possible to get a table-based layout to play nice with the search engines and allow for a greater degree of accessibility, it’s just so much easier to achieve with a standards-based layout and design.


I agree with Ryan about using the term "web standards" too much. I have found that some people react to it as if it’s something that is too restrictive.

"Web standards" can elicit hostile reactions. British accessibility laws cannot really be argued with.

Quote from: rthrash at Jul 13, 2006, 12:12 PM

British accessibility laws cannot really be argued with.

That’s why I hope the french government follow through on a similar law that should be enacted in 2007, that will give a lot of weight to standards...
Not every country has this kind of law...

British accessibility laws are great (on paper) but, as yet, there hasn’t been any major cases where companies have been prosecuted. With a lack of any precedence being set, it doesn’t carry the weight with which it deserves to carry.

The flaw is that the UK Disability Discrimination Act puts a large onus (read: amount of work) on the claimnant to collate, sometimes, quite detailed (and sometimes, completely impractical) information before being able to claim. This means that not enough disabled persons are benefiting from the legislation.

And if you try counting the amount of times the word ’reasonable’ is used in the Act ...

In my view, the Australian Disability Discrimination Act is far superior in a lot of ways to the British equivalent.

My my,... that’s the first time I’ve seen Australian law being complimented I have no idea what the English one looks like but the DDA has certainly helped me convince a few people at times.

The links in the top post no longer work, but I think I’ve read this kind of thing before.

I think that Web Standards is a goal. Often a higher goal than "getting a site to work quickly exactly the way the client wants it".

Essentially: Code using CSS elements, but if something is easier using a table, then use a table. This will remain the case until CSS3 is widespread, which I believe has some table-esque stuff going on.

I’m suspicious about the way that the rise in Web Standards and "tableless" design does in many cases coincide with a recognisable "Web 2.0" look which is clean and simple. A certain degree of this may be due to people finding it difficult to align the usual clutter perfectly across all common browsers.

This very forum page uses tables. And why not? It works.
Look at this Vanilla forums page for example. No tables; it makes designers do things a different way. Is it better? Not necessarily.

I think if you reach a point where you are three tables deep, then something is wrong.

From a MODx perspective, I think that a table in the template is no bad thing - especially as it can be changed later. This is the part that benefits from tables’ stretchy abilities, and absolutely the place that you don’t want to fall to pieces on older browsers. Page content can be rearranged without fear. The "framework" of a complex page benefits from being a table.

The less people around coding xhtml css tableless the more business we get Therefore we’d encourage everyone reading this to stick with the tried and tested table till at least css5

I agree though - sure tables were intended for tabulated data .. a forum might scrape through on that criteria, but if people wanna code tables at 10 bucks a page then live and let live I say.

Quote from: davidm at Jul 13, 2006, 11:13 AM

I wouldn’t count on the guy who pays the bill to make the difference... sometimes you have to fight your way time and again to have it go into their heads...

We just take a position before agreeing to do work for anyone - here’s how we do it, if you want something less then go somewhere else .. actually we don’t need to say that directly, it’s implied in whats included in the pricing.

Quote from: davidm at Jul 13, 2006, 11:13 AM

Mainly, this is the consequence of web standards not being as tangible as eye candy or the likes...

Do you think there’s some loss of eye candy as a result of standards ? I wouldn’t agree or disagree with you I’m just interested in hearing your opinion on that. We have a designer who creates the most beautiful but ’hardest’ designs to code, but we never let standards prevent us from creating a perfectly marked up tableless rendering of the design - but we have struck certain client’s using ’other people’ to do the coding and had requests to remove such elements as rounded corner boxes from the design on the advice from their coders that they’re "impossible" to recreate in a web page - we usually laugh, and give em what they want .. but it’s interesting to watch how quick some people are to ’give up’ rather than spend a bit of time learning ’how’.

So far, I haven’t found a design that was impossible to code .. I’d certainly love to see one though

Quote from: Starbuck at Jul 14, 2006, 09:19 PM

We just take a position before agreeing to do work for anyone - here’s how we do it, if you want something less then go somewhere else .. actually we don’t need to say that directly, it’s implied in whats included in the pricing.

That’s exactly what I do too...
But sometimes there are some outside influences which bring back the old debates...

Recently a CEO I had convinced of the advantages of standards had seen the website another CEO had showed him. Of course it was Flash all around, with animated menus, and a nice design overall. He came to me saying he had thought about it and the menu I had showed him was not as attractive as the one for his friend website... Now he wants an animated menu, never mind accessiblity, never mind page weight... I am looking into enhancing the full CSS dropdown I have built with AJAX but not sure I can accomplish this... (any idea BTW ?)

Quote from: davidm at Jul 13, 2006, 11:13 AM

Do you think there’s some loss of eye candy as a result of standards ? I wouldn’t agree or disagree with you I’m just interested in hearing your opinion on that. We have a designer who creates the most beautiful but ’hardest’ designs to code, but we never let standards prevent us from creating a perfectly marked up tableless rendering of the design - but we have struck certain client’s using ’other people’ to do the coding and had requests to remove such elements as rounded corner boxes from the design on the advice from their coders that they’re "impossible" to recreate in a web page - we usually laugh, and give em what they want .. but it’s interesting to watch how quick some people are to ’give up’ rather than spend a bit of time learning ’how’. So far, I haven’t found a design that was impossible to code .. I’d certainly love to see one though

I fully agree with you, I am not saying web standards compliant website are less sexy than non compliant ones... I also agree anything can be done as far as layouts are concerned (certainly even more stuff !). But the benefits of standards are not visible to the naked eye... of course you can show the benefits to someone, but they can’t really see it themselves...