What Are Web Standards?

Designing with web standards is a general term used to mean that you use the following technologies, and that you use them correctly:

• HTML or XHTML to contain the content,
• CSS to hold all the styling,
• JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM) to take care of any scripting.

These three are sometimes referred to as the “Holy Trinity“.

In the bad old days during the Browser Wars, HTML was used incorrectly.

Objects like tables are supposed to be used for  tabular data but instead they were (ab)used to contain background images and other components just to artificially create a layout. Style information was mashed up with the content making the code ugly, bloated and inefficient.

The web standards project seeks to:

• persuade browser makers to support the standards, as they were intended and
• persuade web professionals to use them that way.

Mm, that sounds nice, but why should I care?

Well take a look at this article for starts, it talks about saving money with this stuff:

3 Ways Designing with Web Standards Saves You Money

Real Geeks Love Standards

Yes I admit it, I am a fan of standards, but it wasn’t always that way. Back when I was happy, carefree developer something called Common Criteria came along and threatened to squeeze all the creative joy out of my “art” of programming. Of course, that was nonsense and once I had managed to read the reams of documentation and absorb its meaning, I got fully on board with structured development.

So although I’m a big fan of certain standards, it doesn’t mean that I think they should be used just for the sake of keeping things “nice”. Web standards are a case in point.

What Are Web Standards?

If you haven’t heard of web standards, the holy trinity or W3C then I recommend that you skip over to What Are Web Standards? and come right back.

What Was That Thing About Saving Money?

There are numerous, tangible benefits to designing with web standards, not least of all, financial savings.

Lower Development and Maintenance Costs

Separating the content from the styling makes your site easier to develop, update and maintain. This makes it less expensive for the developers as less time is needed to add new content, update existing content and test.

No Need To Re-Test and Tweak With Every Major Browser Release

All compliant browsers will always support your code, you do not need to have the developers retest every time a new browser releases a new version just to make sure that the pages still look the same. Your site will be future-proofed, automatically.

Bandwidth Savings

If your site is large then separating the content from the styling will mean a big reduction in the weight of your files, which means a substantial savings on the bandwidth, which in turn translates into lower hosting costs.

Free SEO Improvements

If your site uses meaningful (X)HTML then your site’s content is easier for search engines and therefore customers to find. Some search engines score pages on how well-structured the markup is, your Alexa ranking is affected and other SEO metrics are also improved. Automatically.

Faster Load Time

When you separate the site’s content from the styling, your site gets lighter because there is less code. This means that your site loads into browsers faster and provides a better user experience, this represents an SEO benefit as search engines like Google score pages on their load time.

Automatic Wider Audience, Find More Customers for Free

When your site complies web standards accessibility is improved. That means that not only people with disabilities will be able to access your content, but also your site will be available to the new generation of mobile browsing devices automatically. Which means lots more potential new customers for free.

If your web developer tells you about re-designing or designing with web standards then do not just brush it off as over-zealous geekery. This stuff deserves your attention, it offers real business benefits and real financial savings.