Modern web standards
Development using web standards allows the creation of higher quality sites for reduced costs. We specialise in standards-based design.
What are web standards?
Web standards are specifications created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The most relevant ones to our work are HTML (HyperText Markup Language) 4.01 and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). The standards specify how to create the content and how to specify its presentation.
What is the alternative?
In the late 1990s, David Siegel wrote a book in which he showed how developers could use tables (intended for presenting tabular data) to specify the layout of a graphical web page. It was an innovative idea, but in failing to separate content from presentation, it created many problems — so much so that Siegel later recanted, writing an article entitled the web is ruined and I ruined it.
What are the advantages of using web standards?
- Sites get better placements in search engines.
- Pages load faster, creating a more pleasant browsing experience.
- Development costs are more affordable.
- Standards allow for more control over the appearance of your site.
- It is easy to create visually consistent sites.
- Changes to your site (even dramatic redesigns) are more efficient and much less expensive.
- Sites are more accessible, and can be used by people with disabilities.
What are the disadvantages of using web standards?
A small number of Internet users use browsers which cannot support web standards. According to available statistics, these now represent a tiny — and shrinking — fraction of users. We design our sites so that they degrade gracefully, fully usable on older browsers but losing presentation details that they are unable to support.