The Benefits of using Web Standards in Website Design
There is nothing new about web standards. They’ve been around almost since 1994, but what are web standards and what are their benefits?
What are web standards?
Web standards are a set of guidelines set out by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which aims to provide a blue print for the long term use and development of the internet. The general jist of the W3C guidelines revolves around making websites accessible to all web users regardless of ability, disability or method of internet access. The core tool in making standards compliant websites is XHTML and CSS (cascading style sheets). The XHTML uses sementic markup to display the websites content in a logical order. The CSS code, which is located in an external stylesheet, governs the page layout and design. Different stylesheets can be written for different media types such as browsers, printers, screen readers and pda’s
I finally converted to using semantic XHTML and CSS just over a year ago. Previously I relied on using table based layouts as the main tool for designing websites. I’d been aware of the benefits and issues surrounding the use of web standards compliant HTML and CSS markup for several years, but had been reluctant to make the change due to the differing levels of support across the main different browsers and operating systems. The consequential use of hacks, fixes and work arounds which were then required in order to render the webpage as it was intended to be viewed made the task of learning a completely new methodology a total nightmare.
I finally decided to make the switch following several improvements in CSS support from the various mozilla browsers and Internet explorer 7. The release of Dreamweaver 8 also added extra improved support for the design of standards compliant websites.
Some of the benefits of using semantic XHTML and CSS for website design
- Smaller file sizes
- Improvements in page download speed
- Improved website accessibility
- Improvements in code to text ratio’s
- The ability for quicker design update times
- Print friendly
- The ability apply different design styles for different devices (eg. Screen, print, mobile, pda)
