Breadcrumbs
Web Standards
For years, web designers had to build sites using the equivalent of baling wire and glue. Every page contained all of the code to describe its design and content. Modifications to a site’s design often meant rewriting the entire web site. Costs soared and budgets burst.
“Separate design from content.”
Web standards to the rescue
Web standards allow design to be separated from content. This keeps your content in the HTML and your design code in a separate CSS file. The result is very lean code, so this:
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" bgcolor="#3366CC" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="middle">
<font size="6" color="#fffff" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Welcome to our web site</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Becomes this:
<h1>Welcome to our web site<h1>
A bit nicer, isn't it?
So why should you care?
Having your site built according to web standards offers you several advantages over your competition:
- Backward and forward compatibility - Web standards ensure that your site can be read by any web browser or device, no matter how old or new.
- Easy printing - Users can print out your pages without wasting toner, and site owners do not have to maintain a “printer friendly” version of each page. Try printing this page to see what we mean.
- Ease of maintenance - By having very clean code, it takes much less time (and therefore money) to make changes to the site.
- Accessibility - It is far easier to build pages that conform to disability legislation such as Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Delivery to multiple devices - Sites built with web standards display very easily in alternative devices such as web-enabled cell phones and PDA’s simply by using a separate CSS file optimized for these devices. There is no need to maintain a version of your site for cell phones, another version for PDA’s, and so on.
- Faster download times - Pages with lean code download much faster. Browsers have less work to do to render your pages, so users feel that your site loads faster than others.
- Search engine placement - Search engines are looking for your site’s content, so why not make it easier for them? By keeping your site’s presentation code in a separate file, there is less clutter to obscure your page’s content. As a result, search engines can index your pages faster.
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