HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Web site standardization
refers to the development process of standard web sites or the correction of
nonstandard sites to fulfill the requirements to become standard-compliant sites. This phrase has been recently
associated with widely accepted web design technologies, principles, techniques, and best practices, and
unfortunately, various tricks as well as widely adopted CSS and JavaScript hacks. Most web designers are unaware that
such tricks and hacks should not be used at all.
The main goals of standardization are functionality, interoperability, and browser and resolution independence
in order to maximize user experience, access to content, menu usability, mobile-friendliness, and predictable
behavior.
The Role of Standardization
The goals of web design cannot be achieved without a standardized approach. How would it be possible to use
printers on a daily basis without paper-size standards? How could anyone use electric devices without standardized
voltage? Why do web designers assume that standards are not essential to web quality assurance?
The grammar and other rules defined by web standards should be followed in web design. Although browsers
have strong built-in error-handling features capable of eliminating problems on the client side, web developers
should not misuse these features.
Routine design tasks should be based on standards. Overall, designing costs of standard-compliant web
design are lower because fewer design decisions are needed. A further advantage is that developers can reuse their
knowledge during development.
Poor functionality and usability might have a severe impact on web site traffic and business revenue, because
users switch to other web sites within a few seconds if the content is not provided in an appropriate manner or the
user experience is poor.
Since various browsers interpret incorrect markup in different ways, markup errors can lead to inconsistencies,
bad layout, displeasing styling, and unexpected site behavior. The best way to eliminate such problems is to fulfill all
the requirements of structure, syntax, and other rules described by the appropriate Document Type Definition and
W3C Recommendation (see the “W3C” section).
Web designers usually try to implement the latest popular technologies to meet client expectations and compete
with other developers, but not all of these technologies are standardized. Applying up-to-date web standards
can be challenging, but it is vital for providing powerful, modern features while making web sites ready for later
improvements and future standard implementations. Standard compliance is an essential feature of web site
development that guarantees high code quality [3] and improves overall web site usability.
The Cost of Nonstandardized Markup
All Internet users encounter web sites from time to time that break apart and show partly overlapped or incorrectly
positioned elements and/or unreadable content. The cause is, in most cases, the nonstandard or browser-specific
source code, and sometimes the lack of standard support of the web browser used to render the pages.
The majority of web sites are obsolete from the standardization point of view. Even the largest and most
well-known companies publish nonstandard documents constantly.
The major drawbacks of nonstandardized documents are the following:
•
Inadequate search engine indexing. Crawlers cannot index incorrectly coded documents
efficiently, which can cause visitor loss.
1
•
Longer download time.
•
Longer rendering.
1
There
are hundreds of other factors that affect search engine indexing.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search