Comments on: Web Standards Survival Handbook Part One

By: ashley

ashley — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:55:34 +0000

Those that do adopt web standards can expect to see a much better user expierence and hopefully better results in the search engines soon, for people who are disabled I heard that Google is launching an assessable search or atleast it is in the Google labs.Web Standards are great when you are dealing with the people but for programmers and such it is not a big deal for who cares about the search bots or the others on the web when your just storing your ideas or times about life on the web?

By: Stuart

Stuart — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

Had a little problem with this page on Friday night, so appologies to anyone who couldn’t see this page. It was Friday the 13th after all. Everything should be ok now.

By: Cerebral

Cerebral — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

Your article exactly fits my current situation, so much in fact that it’s somewhat resting. I’ve got the workmate who shares interest, we’ve got a css guidelines document. Some people begin to change their table-old style habits, some not yet. By letting each one make the transition at its own pace and helping them when possible, I hope we’ll soon go in the same direction.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

@Cerebral: Sounds like you’re moving forward. Although it can be slow progress do hang in there, when the team starts putting out quality sites you can be proud of what you started.

By: Marc McHale

Marc McHale — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

I work during the day for a local government IT Services department. Pushing the case the web standards has taken some time, but now the managers can see the benifits, everything is being led from there.

It takes time, and at times can be frustrating, but I assure you, when a website with 750,000 pages needs an overhaul, you will soon wish it was done with standards in the first place!

When you can sell it to someone that it would take less than half the time to update a site that big with a new look if it was written with standards in mind, then you dont really need to say much more! The fact that you could add to that, easier compatibility across browsers/platforms and devices with stylesheets alone and decreased bandwidth overhead, along with lower maintenance effort, it all of a sudden becomes a no brainer!

Its hards work, but boy is it worth it!

By: emmanuel

emmanuel — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

Loads of good advice here - I tend to push developers to use xml, and completely separate content from the actual code.

the standard you set up is about how you build the xml, instead of how you render the code.

And in this case, backend developers don’t have to worry about web standards. You just have to make sure that they follow the xml standard you have set up. One person can then handle all front end stuff (XSL, CSS, javascript).

By: Stuart

Stuart — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0000

@Emmanuel: That’s a really good point, and I can see that could really come in handy for larger development teams.

From my perspective our team (of 7) tends to not be as specialized. As a result we handle everything, including both front and backend coding so it becomes important that everyone understands web standards.