Web Standards for Everyone

by Liam McDermott, 13 March 2007 - 9:30pm

There are many tutorials explaining how to use Web Standards ^[1], what seems to be missing are reasons to use Web Standards. This series of articles aims to remedy that.

What Are Web Standards?

The Webs inventor (note the difference between the Web and the Internet^[2]) Sir Tim Berners-Lee's dream is of a common space where people can share information and work together, regardless of location and platform used.

Web standards are a set of rules Web designers and browser vendors (Opera, Firefox, Safari etc.) follow. These standards ensure a designer can publish a site that will look the same across all browsers on all platforms. To succeed this requires the co-operation of both designers and vendors.

Web Standards exist to ensure the hardware and software used to access the Web work together without conflict.

Why Use Web Standards?

Following is a list of reasons to use Web standards. These will be expanded into individual articles:

• Making it easy for Search Engines to ‘read’ your site;
• ensuring People with Disabilities have equal access;
• future proofing;
• quality assurance—old browser versions and making code readable;
• reducing cost.

These are the reasons for designing to Web standards. More on these points will be published here shortly.

Resources

1. ↑ Practically every Web standards article you could wish for is available on this SimpleBits page.
2. ↑ See our article: What are the Differences Between the Internet and the World Wide Web?