Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome The Web Standards!!!

If you are a tech savvy user and you surf the Internet following web design and development related topics, you must have heard about Web Standards.

So what is all the fuss about? In short, it is a set of recommendations and guidelines put by W3C organization to browser vendors aiming to get a browser independent process of web design and development and user experience.

Do you remember the times of browser wars? Microsoft and Netscape were fighting for the browser market share by introducing more and more proprietary features of their products, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, thus almost making half of the web inaccessible for users, depending on the browser they were using.

W3C brings together the architects of major modern browsers, as well as independent web designers and developers renowned for their web standards advocacy. Each time a new set of recommendations is issued, it is a result of a hard work done by people involved to reach consensus.

In general, Web Standards apply to:

• Valid HTML/XHTML and CSS code
• Semantically correct code
• Separation of content (HTML/XHTML), presentation (CSS) and behavior (JavaScript)
• Accessibility

I will cover each area in more details in my future posts, so stay tuned.

What’s in it for me?

If you are an Internet consumer, then for you this issue is probably transparent and maybe this is the first time you meet Web Standards. Well, you should care. Internet belongs to you! Just like any tangible product, if it is not usable for the end user, it better not be.

If you are a web developer and/or designer, you should be aware what Web Standards are. If you are not, maybe it is time to look for another job where they will educate you? Or even better, you can regularly read our blog.
If you are a business owner and your website is an important part of your operations and branding, you should care too! Your standards compliant website will be easier to maintain and manage. It will have increased usability, making your business more exposed. It will be not only user friendly but it will also be more search engine friendly. If the users feel comfortable while shopping on your site, they will come again. All in all, your return on investment will be increased. Which is why you are doing business anyway.

In any case, this is just an introduction and more to come in next articles.

Filed under: web design, web standards.