The Basics Pt 2
Currently I’m covering the simple - but important - concepts that I think everyone should know so they can create better web content, design, or code. The last entry was about DocTypes, and how they can help you be standards compliant. However, this leads to other questions…
What Is Standards Compliance, and Why Is It a Good Thing?
The term ’standards compliance’ tends to be flung around quite a lot these days, often incorrectly, or at least with some degree of misunderstanding.
All standards compliance means is that web sites and browsers confirm to certain suggestions made by the w3 organisation. These ‘recommendations’ for each form of html and other web languages form the standards. The ultimate goal of this is so that sites will look the same no matter what platform you view them on.
Its that simple, standards mean you can rely on your code acting the same, and being understandable, in different browsers and on different platforms. Sounds easy doesn’t it?
However this is where it gets tricky. Currently no single browser is standards compliant. None of them. They all claim to be, but they lie. The ones with the least bugs (very few) are Mozilla and Opera. Internet Explorer does the job, especially in v6, but still has many more problems then either of the other two. One thing to note about Mozilla and Opera is that they update much more than IE, and this is almost certainly the primary reason for their better support.
These bugs shouldn’t be a problem for many designers however, as often (though sadly not always) these bugs may not cause an obvious problem, or they have simple workarounds. Soon, I hope, there will be no need to have workarounds.
The Bottom Line
Authoring your web pages to be standards compliant will make sure that your site is seen by more people how you want it to be seen. That is better for the viewer, and better for you.