The "What" and "Why" of Web Standards & Accessibility
You may have been reading on all sorts of web design and development sites all over the net about web standards, and overwhelmed with sifting through the information. Or you may never have heard of web standards and wonder what the big deal is. Sit back with a cup of tea (or your vice of choice) and let's go through the basics together.
Once upon a time, there were two primary browsers used for surfing the internet. These browsers were called Netscape and Internet Explorer. Each of these browsers fought for your attention by using special codes to do tricks that the other could not do. Big problems were discovered, however, because there was no 'standard' way of making web sites for both. What would work in one would render the site totally unreadable in the other browser, and vice versa. Website designers would then have to develop two different sites to present to whichever browser the visitor had, doubling the cost of even the most basic of websites. Of course most companies don't have that kind of money so development of the internet itself was greatly inhibited.
A group of web experts came together and formed the World Wide Web Consortium, known as the W3C, in an effort to find solutions to these problems. The W3C created standard formats as a means for web designers and developers to accomplish their tasks.
Web standards consist of a few basic principles.
A. Separate Design from content by use of CSS.
B. Use semantic markup. Markup used to code websites should contain only tags for headings, paragraphs, and the like. Tables are allowed only for tabular data such as a spreadsheet or calendar.
C. Use meaningful labels for everything on the page.
The browser manufacturers were finally convinced that they would be doing a better service to their users to comply, than to continue with their proprietary ways.
certain things, and instituted CSS as part of the standards.
Neater presentation of web pages to your browser, separating the content from the design aspects make pages on the web smaller and therefore faster to download. The leaner pages also allow your browser to process the pages more quickly and creates a sometimes noticeable difference in how fast you are able to see the page displayed on your monitor
For more information, visit the official web standards project
