What are Web Standards?

Web Standards are technologies that have been developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and others. Web Standards have been designed in an attempt to future proof websites and allow them to be more accessible to a larger number of internet devices, such as screen readers (for those with visual disabilities, internet enabled mobile phones or pda's).

AltStudio has made the decision to embrase web standards wherever is it possible to. All new site designs will be developed to comply with Web Standards. This site has been developed using XHTML. Which is the poster child of Web Standards.

Web Standards - Why Bother?

The relevance of Web standards is most obvious when we consider emerging technologies. In these times of tremendous growth, the Web needs guidance in order to reach its full potential - and standards can serve as a set of guides to help realize that potential.

The use of standards makes pages that we build cross-browser and cross-platform. Anyone who's been active in Web development for more than 15 minutes knows how time-consuming and complicated it is to double-code for different browser versions. Standards help us avoid such tedium and ultimately more expense for the client.

1. Reduce Development and Maintenance Time

Coding in accordance with standards can shorten both development and maintenance time. Debugging and troubleshooting therefore becomes easier, because the code follows a pattern. Accessibility is another very important issue behind the Web standards: not only does it mean allowing the Web to be fully used by people with disabilities, it also means allowing people with unconventional browsers to have access to any Web page.

2. Increase Search Engine Success

From a page ranking point of view, complying with standards also guarantees better results and increased visibility in search engines. Standards-compliant documents get indexed more accurately due to the structural information present in them, as they can be easily accessed and evaluated by mechanical and human methods alike. Compliant code can also be easily converted to other formats, such as databases or Word documents. This allows for more versatile use of the information within the document. It also allows a simplified migration to new systems such as televisions and PDAs.

3. Allow Backward Compatibility and Validation

Standards are written to be compliant with older browser versions. This is what the W3C refers to as "backward compatibility". While these browsers may not show everything as initially intended, they will still understand the basic structure of Web documents, and display them accordingly. Compliant code can also be validated through a validation service. This, again, makes the developer's work a lot easier and can save a lot of production time.

4. Graceful Degradation Now, and in the Future

Another important factor to remember is that most Web standards are designed with forward and backward compatibility in mind. This means that Web pages coded for old versions of the standards will still be supported in new versions of browsers, while Web pages coded for new versions of the standards will gracefully degrade to produce an acceptable result in older browsers.

5. Achieve a More Stable Web

With the arrival of new hardware like mobile phones and hand-held devices, coding 100% compatible Web applications will only get harder, if not simply impossible. Following the standards is the most efficient way to achieve a better, more stable Web, where applications we can only dream of today can be turned into the reality of tomorrow.

6. Common Knowledge

Web standards offer a set of rules that every developer can follow, understand, and become familiar with. When one developer builds a site according to standards, another will be able to pick up where the former left off as easily as if he had been the one designing it in the first place.

To view more information about web standards and to see the full online article where this information came from visit the Sitepoint link below. http://www.sitepoint.com/article/standards-sensible-design