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Web Standards
Introduction
Web standards are designed to allow for interoperability between all web
browsers, on every operating system, and even on every electronic device
available. But is that really reality? Are all web browsers 100% standardscompliant? Are all web developers using web standards properly? Do web
developers build a page using web standards, and then just walk away
confident that their design will hold up everywhere? The really simple
answer to that last question is no; while that’s an ideal situation, that is far
from reality.
In this article we'll be covering:
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The state of web standards adoption today
How to check whether standards are being used properly on a site
How many sites are using web standards properly
The reasons people don't adopt standards
Standards are Important!
There are also some direct business reasons to consider. In general, using
web standards improves a web site's position in search engine rankings (how
high up it appears on the list when you do a Google search) and how easy it
is to find in the first place. In addition, using standards and best practices
will generally make the web page more accessible by people with disabilities
trying to make use of it, and users trying to access the site on their mobile
devices. Extra users and increased visibility is always good for business.
The single biggest complaint from individuals who say that standards-based
development is a waste of time is that it takes too long to learn to use web
standards instead of outdated methods and develop web sites that work
across all browsers. So why not start out by learning the correct way to do it,
and save yourself some trouble? You’ve decided to learn how to build
websites, and you need to do it one way or another, so why not learn how to
do it properly from the beginning?
How do you check for standards compliance?
Before we go any further, the question you’re probably asking yourself is
“how do you know if a web site uses web standards?” Does it look any
different to any other web site?
Yes and no. Web standards-compliant websites, if developed properly,
should look no different from web sites coded using a jumble of hobbledtogether markup. However, the source code of the web site (try right/Ctrlclicking on a web site and selecting the “Source” or “View Source” option—
the exact terminology varies between browsers) will look vastly different. A
standards-compliant web site will have nice, clean markup with little or no
formatting embedded in the page itself. It might be hard for you to notice
this at a glance, but trust me, visually impaired individuals using screen
readers and search engines will notice right away. We have already covered
the advantages of using web standards in the last article.
The easiest way to check for standards compliance is to use a handy tool,
available online, called a validator. The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) makes a validator freely available at http://validator.w3.org/. You
can (and should) use this tool to check any web sites you’re developing for
errors in your HTML. CSS can be checked out using the CSS validator
available at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/. Feel free to click through
these links, and test a few of your favorite web sites.
Ensuring your pages validate is only half the battle. How do we check if
browsers are standards-compliant? The Web Standards Project has
developed a series of tests called the Acid tests, which use some complex
HTML and CSS rules (plus some other markup and code) to see if a browser
can render various test screens properly. The latest version of the Acid test,
Acid3, is still a work in progress. You can read more about the Acid tests at
http://www.acidtests.org/, as well as go to the actual test pages to put your
browser through its paces. In addition, if you are writing HTML5 code, you
will want to know if your browser supports it and how well it does. A web
site that will tell you the level of support for HTML5 from your browser is
http://html5test.com.
Standards compliance on sites today
Are major web sites using web standards, or are they just hacking something
together? Let’s take a look at a few different companies out there and see
how they score using the W3C’s markup validation service. You’ll be
surprised how many large web site don't pass standards validation tests;
don’t get disheartened however—there is no reason why you can’t go one
better and get your sites validating properly. Bear in mind as you read the
below reports that the larger and more complicated a web site is, the harder
it is to make it validate, generally speaking (there are other factors to
consider, such as the technologies used).
Amazon: Shopping with standards?
Chances are that if you’ve ever done any online shopping, you’ve probably
visited http://www.amazon.com/ (or one of its country-specific web sites).
Amazon is a megastore in cyberspace, offering everything from books to
CDs to groceries in certain areas. Does Amazon.com validate though? A
quick validation of their home page reports 450+ errors and over 160
warnings! Amazon.com fails with flying colors! Not only is there invalid
markup, but their declared doctype is HTML 4.01 (ancient by Internet
standards).
Amazon has a bit of a journey when it comes to standards-compliance. I
don’t have the inside track at Amazon, but if I’m allowed to speculate for a
minute, I’d say that because Amazon has been around for quite some time,
they have probably been using the same software to power their web site for
their entire lifespan. Because web standards didn’t really grab the spotlight
until early in this millennium, chances are that the system that Amazon uses
for selling products online was developed back when web standards weren't
really supported or publicized. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess that
Amazon suffers from a case of just sticking with what works for them.
CNN: Standardized news?
Surely news organizations are semantic beings? http://cnn.com is one of the
largest media web sites around. With global resources, reporting on news
stories as they happen, surely they’ve got a team of in-house specialists
ensuring that their web site is produced with valid markup? CNN.com (as of
January 2013) fails validation with over 200 errors. They list an HTML5
doctype, but a lot of their markup looks like it is holdover from HTML4
with presentational elements aplenty.
Apple: The pinnacle of elegance in design … and validation?
Apple is renowned for their beautiful and functional hardware and software
products. Their product announcements are almost like religious experiences
for droves of loyal followers. Apple’s web site (http://apple.com) is
often acclaimed as being beautifully designed and well organized, but does it
validate? Apple.com comes really close to having valid HTML5 markup.
With only 2 errors, there’s a mixture of markup “hacks” to make Internet
Explorer see the site right and a custom keyword. The Apple web site comes
really close to validating.
Why the lack of compliant sites?
We’re left crying: “Why, why can’t they just validate?” That may be a little
dramatic, but it’s at least similar in content to the question running through
your mind at this point. Why do so few web sites validate? I’ve talked about
a few possible reasons already — things like legacy e-commerce systems or
content management systems — but there’s a few other underlying reasons
as well.
Education
Many schools don't stress web standards. The web coding curricula is
generally viewed as being below the technical threshold of most computer
science programs and above the technical threshold of most MIS/New
Media programs.
What I'm getting at here is that many educational courses don’t cover this
kind of stuff in any great level of detail. I would be willing to wager that if
you ask 10 developers who work with web standards where they learned
how to use web standards that 9 of them would reply that they are selftaught (the other one won’t answer you because they don't understand the
question).
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is the group responsible
for developing standards, and the Web Standards Project (WaSP) are taking
on this challenge though and are really pushing to have web standards
support improve, both from browser manufacturers and from developers.
The entire reason this course you’re enrolled in stresses web standards so
much is that I'm just trying to get rid of a few more of the reasons (I hesitate
to use the word “excuses” here…) why people aren’t adopting web
standards. There’s really no excuse for not using them, given the benefits
they incur.
Business reasons
On forums that discuss web standards there is usually an interesting
exchange between those who believe that web standards should be used
because they make sense (for all of the reasons we’ve previously discussed),
and those who just say “so what”. (I'm sorry to admit I have had this
discussion with a relative.)
The fact of the matter is, web browsers end up handling really bad code.
Your pages don't need to validate in order to have them display properly in
most of the major browsers. From a business perspective, where time equals
money, why bother spending any additional time to get them to validate at
all? You can either crank out a mess of code in 30 minutes, or you can spend
30 minutes coding your page in HTML and CSS and an additional 30
minutes making sure that it validates across all browsers. Which choice do
you think is easier?
A lot of people from my generation (never mind how old I am!) learned to
build web sites using tables for layout, and font tags to deal with typography.
It can be intimidating to re-learn how to do something when what you’re
doing still “works” (still looks fine in most web browsers). Employers
generally don’t know the difference; I’ve never once had a manager talk
about the quality of my markup during a performance review. So really,
where’s the incentive?
I’m going to throw in here (you can guess which side I’m usually arguing)
that taking the messy-code approach is shortsighted. Based on my
experience, doing a re-design of a standards-based web site is much easier
than converting a mess of improperly coded pages (I’ve done both). I have
yet to hit that utopia promised by HTML/CSS that you will only have to
touch the CSS during a re-design, but I’ve come close.
Also bear in mind that you will see a lot more web job adverts these days
asking for knowledge of web standards than ever before.
Summary
In this article we’ve talked about the state of web standards adoption today
— how to check whether standards are being used properly on a site, how
many sites are using web standards properly and the reasons why people
don’t adopt standards. As you’ve seen above, the reasons aren’t really that
compelling and should be fairly easy to overcome.
So what’s an enterprising web developer of the future to do? Do you bother
with web standards or do you fire up a graphical editor and do things the
"old fashioned way"? Hopefully, you know the right answer to this
question!!!
This article was originally written by Jonathan Lane
(http://dev.opera.com/author/1072078) and published as part of the Opera Web
Standards Curriculum (now the W3C Web Standards Curriculum http://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Main_Page#Web_Standards_Curriculum_tab
le_of_contents). It has been revised and updated by Blaine Robertson under the Creative
Commons Attribution, Non Commercial - Share Alike 2.5 license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/).