Web Standards discussion

[LazyJim]

Discussion following another thread: Do you validate your markup?

Review the relevant quotes from there below and please submit your opinions and experiences.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Here's my conspiracy theory, read if you care...
Not to knock people who design for a living but... I think a huge reason and source of a lot of the money behind pushing web standards is that once you make it so valid code becomes important to all webmasters and SEOs (which i'm sorry but right now, it's not) you eliminate a HUGE chunk of competition for you as a designer.

Think about it... designers lose thousands (millions?) per year to high school kids with a little creative juice who can code well enough to make a site look good in most browsers. If you make it so they have to use valid code a lot of smalltime designers or designers that build sites for a hobby won't be able to do it themselves anymore. Then who will they turn to? You got it... pro designers with experience and training in valid code.

This will also generate new business because people like me who can't code valid anything but PHP would literally be at the mercy of design snobs with their "new" price scale since valid code became a necessity.

Originally Posted by jjmac

I'm all for high school kids getting a design initiative and finding some work -- that's how I got started too. But as with any profession, there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than someone who's not involved will see on the surface.

Another (and bigger) problem in my opinion is not the high school kids who are doing design business, it's the people who caim they are a professional and still do not know the details about what they're doing. These people charge outrageous fees and the customers get little more than what they would get from a high school student...

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

I agree, but that's capitalism for you. If there is a market out there and the customer is willing to pay more for inferior products, people are going to take advantage of that.

Originally Posted by jjmac

...-- in my opinion this is what is driving people to ask the question "What am I getting for all this extra money", similar to the questions you've posed here.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

So what's wrong with that? If the problem is that people are charging to much for inferior work and it's causing clients to ask why, then it appears to me the problem is fixing itself without web standards.

I'll be the first to admit I have my fields of expertise and web standards isn't one of them so there are probably a few underlying points I'm totally missing. But from my perspective, things are working fine now and (on the webmaster side) web standards will only help designers. Not the rest of us.

Originally Posted by Colleen

GeorgeB, you didn't mean to offend but calling those of us who care about standards and accessiblity, snobs, is offensive.

I don't care for the sake of design, I care for the disabled, I care to make their lives a little damn easier. Snob? I think not. We have to consider everyone, not just ourselves, should the day come you lose your eyesight or anything else that makes your life a little harder, I should hope someone cares enough to help.

It doesn't matter so much to me if my site looks good on some "snobs" PDA... it matters to me that a disabled person can at least get around to the best of their ability, I will do what I can to make their lives easier, at least then I can sleep better at night knowing I did my share.

"web standards will only help designers" you really need to read up what standards are all about, it's to be sure a website is functional cross-platform, cross-browser, for special devices such a screen readers. We're making sure a website is accessible for everyone.

That's such a bad thing?

I know as far as I am concerned, it doesn't help me at all, except that I did the right thing.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Word... You are right. I take that back.

If accessibility for disabled folks is your primary concern I can't find a single argument against that in my tiny brain.

But admit with me... "some" designers are snobs? I mean you should go over to sitepoint and just follow a few of the highly regarded members over there around. Their asses get kissed so much and there are so many people over there who think their designs are touched by the one above. I guess that's really where I get the snob impression from. My bad for stereotyping...

But I know there are some designers out there who are not only extremely talented but cool people as well. In fact you are just a nice person all around.

Originally Posted by JohnScott

*Group hug*

Originally Posted by Colleen

Yes, some are. As with any profession, you'll find snobs, I am sure one of the guys who cleans up elephant shit at the zoo could be a snob.

I just care to better the lives of people if/when I can.

Thanks, George.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

If you make it so they have to use valid code a lot of smalltime designers or designers that build sites for a hobby won't be able to do it themselves anymore.

Originally Posted by LazyJim

I've had enough of this "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" arguments!
Firstly: with that attitude how is the web ever going to evolve?
Secondly: it is broke!

GeorgeB - your comments about elitism and shunning out the little new people ("high school web designers")... are simply uneducated! Sorry but this is how I feel. Please don't take this personally because I value your participation in these discussions and have for a long time been interested in rectifying the current situation of uneducated "web designers" and other web related people.




Why should such people be unable to compete in a web standards environment?
Once web standards are more evolved and supported by browsers, budding young web designers/developers will not have to learn all the quirks of individual browsers, and just learn the one "correct" way to code.

If anything web standards strive to level the playing field and make everyones' lives easier. At the same time a professional quality standard is available as a target for web designers and as a gauge from the customer's perspective - every industry has "best practises" and professional standards so why should "web design" be any different (really talking about paid jobs here).

Furthermore, self-built hobby sites made by non- "web designers" will eventually come to be better coded and easier to produce. Not just because of the reduced learning difficulty as mentioned above, but think how many "hobby sites" are built with Microsoft Frontpage (and other similar products)... Now imagine if Frontpage produced quality clean standards compliant code! - Web standards makes it far easier to make visual web page editors that work. It's all about interoperability / portability and efficiency of software and work-flows.

The proof is out there! Although as of right now, I think we have a long way to go till many of these "dreams" become reality, but we are already making great progress - just look at blogging and the tools available. Now the average web user can have a well coded standards based web site (blog) and apply a range of ready made styles / "skins". They can integrate their photo albums (for example) from other web sites and always have the option of "getting their hands dirty" if they are interested in taking it further or need more power/control over their web site - and all with the support of their peers (and those that have already gained new skills in the area) who all help each other and share information online.

That's just one example of success by web standards, now here's one of failure by lack thereof. Variable opacity PNG images. Work like a dream come true for web designers and would be ubiquitous now but for one thing holding them back: Microsoft Internet Explorer does not support the PNG standard. MSIE turns our sexy variable transparency special-FX (whether subtle or flamboyant) into ugly grey lumps! Not only that but IE has the technology, it is capable of displaying these variable opacity PNG's correctly but only when you use MSIE propriety code that is awkward and less powerful / flexible than the standard methods.

Hope for the future!
IE7 supports variable opacity PNG images right now, assuming the final release will keep proper support, then consider the PNG flood-gates open!

Just to finish off, imagine what standards could do for typography (font faces and their many technical bits) on the web. Ask any designer involved with print design industry how frustrating web design can be with a crippling lack of control over web site typography. There are two things stopping better control: standardisation both of the code and technology; and legal issues. Both will (hopefully) be resolved only by communication between organisations (stakeholders, software developers and industry regulators) and eventual agreement on standards.

I know this is stretching the thread topic of validators to the underlying principles of standardisation, but hopefully I have helped you and others to see that standards are good not evil!


P.S. Sorry for the long essay!

P.P.S. Don't try and validate my company web page!

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

OK I read through it and I have to tell you, you make some interesting and compelling arguments. Because as you say I'm "uneducated" on this matter I can't really pose a viable argument against any of your points.... save one.

(Note: I didn't take it personally, when you're right you're right. I'm no designer )

The "reducing learning difficulty" point. How can you proclaim that making a system more complex will make it easier to learn? I gotta tell ya... right now... it's pretty darn easy

You see I know standards. Not the type of standards we're discussing here but telecommunications networks protocols and standards. It's my job and the reason they pay me so much is because it's complicated as hell! Constantly new ones coming out damn near monthly. Because telecommunications standards are so complex it is far beyond the average hobbyist tinkerer to fully grasp and understand to be able to build a truly scalable and secure neighborhood network for example. Hence they have to pay telco providers to provide this service for them. Im going off on a tangent but hopefully you get my analogy.

This is what I feel will happen with web standards. We'll move to making them mandatory then once the net is at the mercy of the W3C they'll start releasing newer and more complex standards and protocols and the war will begin.

Now about elitists and shunning being uneducated. What's funny is that's the only part of my statement that wasn't! There IS a sense of elitism and so much better than thou attitude among PRO web designers. In fact as Coleen put it you'll find that in ANY profession, so claiming there isn't is simply absurd. Now you may be just in your position but I assure you for every designer out there with a truly good intentioned vision for the future of the web there are hundreds, nay, likely thousands who are just out there to make as much money as they can. If that means getting behind standards that will cut out the low level competition so be it.

In other words... maybe not you... but the point of my conspiracy theory post was that a lot of people pushing the standards wagon have motives other than the better good of the web.

[LazyJim]

...continued...

Originally Posted by jjmac

Web standards are actually less complex. The problem comes in because people are used to doing things the way they've always done them. If a person who has never coded before had a class over doing it the old way, and one over doing it standards compliant, they would surley choose the standards compliant way because it is SO much easier.

To prove this, go to a page which is layed out with tables and doesnt care about standars compliance and view the source. Try to follow it. Now go to my portfolio page and view the source. See the difference? Standards compliant code is MUCH easier not only to write, but to read by other people and by web technologies.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Everyone in this thread kinda glossed over the blazingly obvious irony that if you do a google search on a few high paying competitive keywords I've got $$ that says the majority of the top resulting pages wont validate.... Until you can explain that away the whole valid code = better serps argument wont fly with me.

Not to mention what was also mentioned in this thread. The serps sites themselves dont even validate!

Would like to hear thoughts on that as well.

Originally Posted by jjmac

This is a relativly easy question. Standards based coding is relatively new. It takes any person no matter what profession a while to learn new technologies that evolve. It is much easier to write a new standards based page from scratch than it is to convert an non-standards compliant page to standards. In my particular case, every page that I wrote before I learned to code with standards, do not validate. Every page I wrote after do validate. I constantly have web designs that I'm working on and I don't have time to convert the old ones at the momment -- and the clients don't always want to pay to have the page updated due highly to the mentality that is spreading here. I'm sure plenty of other designers fall into the same category I do.

What I don't like about this argument is that one of the basis for arguing is "I can't see a difference, so there must not be one."

Who would complain if someone invented a better concrete that was stronger and cheaper? Everyone can understand that. The buildings would look the same still, but I doubt you'd hear the same argument you hear in this thread.

This is because too many people don't understand the technicalties behind the benefits of valid code. These people probably don't understand the full weight of these things. Here's just a few:

Valid code is based on XML-like technology, and can actually use XML now. Did you know that the new file system MS puts out will be based on XML? Think of the data integration, files on your system could be a web page just as easily as they could be secure. All data systems are integrating with XML now, think of the possibilities of searching data, MUCH more accurate results in much less time. I'd say this alone fits the "stronger, harder concrete" argument, but lets look at some more.

Seperating design from content. There's an idea! Standards compliant page does this. What does this mean? It means that my content can show up however I want on any medium, regardless of how it's coded. I can have my page show up a certain way on a monitor, but when the page is printed it looks completely different, such as removing the bulky internet headers and menu's to where all you have is plain, readable text. The content can be styled for devices such as cell phones and PDA's with no extra overhead to the server or the web page. There many many devices that can recieve custom layout information all for the simple fact that the design is seperated from the content. I do this on many pages now, especially for print and PDA.

And of course there is the accessibility advantages. People on specialized equipment such as computers with accessibility options turned on for people with problems seeing, can customize the content however THEY need it, not how the designer feels they need it. Complete control is given to the end-user and not some designer with tripple 26 inch monitors (oh yeah, i've got 3...lol) You can actually go to any standards compliant page and create your own style for that page if you have the gumption to do so, and make the page look however you want.

Think of the possibilites! Filters for children that automatically restrict all adult content while rendering the rest of the page, colorblind templates to change colors that could possibly be a problem to better combinations, search engines that pull all relavant information from thousands of different pages to customize a page specifically for one search result, anything is possible.

Is it feeling harder and stronger now? There's even more technicalities I can get into, but believe me valid code is worth it.

I do appreciate the fact that you're not just agreeing with developers without knowing why. But you really do need to do some homework before using the "I can't see it so it's not there" argument.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

"I can't see it so it's not there"

When/where did I say something to that affect?

But just to be argumentative I'll counter with this... sometimes when you can't see something, it's because it's not there.

[GeorgeB]

I'll back off from asscerting my opinions on a subject matter I'm admittedly ill equipped to argue effectively.

Instead I'll move it to my perspective from a business standpoint and give you the opportunity to explain to me as one of those clueless web users/cleints why we need web standards. So here goes my quotable statement:

I'm a business man. I'm one of those clients who'll flat out state in his job posting that valid code is not necessary for this job and that I'm not wiling to pay extra for it. Simply put, from my perspective, it doesn't hurt my rankings, and it doesn't affect how my site looks in most browsers. (Yes... you can have clean code that looks good in most browsers and doesn't validate. It's true I swear!). So please explain to me why I should pay more.

Thanks,

- George

[Kalina]

You shouldn't have to pay more in my opinion, it should be a natural part of the process, coding invalid markup and then taking money for it, is just wrong. Well, to me. I provide my clients with the best of my abilities, each and every time.

[LazyJim]

off the top of my head (and then through a spell checker)...

The extra cost involved is either to allow retraining development staff or pure greed by service providers that see it as an opportunity to charge extra.

Probably a combination of both.

The retraining issue can be resolved by firing all your dinosaur developers and hiring young new talent! These new recruits will probably demand lower pay (initially) and increase your productivity as long as you provide good project management - which incidentally will be easier when you use standards.

Further, should you wish to use different developers in the future, you shouldn't find they charge extra for re-writing your pages they way they like to code - they will already understand the basic coding methods used!

[Immo]

As far as developing for disabled people is concerned I would rather not bother because of the extra amount of time it takes / the amount of disabled users. Of course in reality it doesnt work like that, plus in making my sites accessible to the disabled I am also making the markup better, correcting errors, making the site cross browser / system / os compatible and generally making the site a better experience for everyone.

More visitors and more repeat visitors are the core of a website and if they vanish and dont come back then you are left with nothing.

Accessibility is a pain in the butt, but if you get it right it will be the best pain youve ever had...

[Dom]

One thing that I will say, as someone who offers web design services, is that I regularly cringe at the importance some seem to give to having a page that validates. It is not the be all and end all, and a page that doesn't validate is not necessarily a page with poor accessibility. In the same way a page that does validate is not suddenly the very definition of an accessible site.

If I run a test on the directory I launched recently it fails validation on 8 counts, all of which are caused by the markup produced by the script it uses. Let's run through these disastrous problems, shall we?

• Three of the failures are unescaped ampersands. & instead of & - that'll undoubtly cause problems for thousands (!)
• A <form> tag where it's 'not allowed'. Again - it functions just fine in all major browsers past and present. It will likely continue to function fine for the next generation of browsers too.
• A <script> element without a specified type. Once again the functionality loss is ZERO. Sure it'd be neater if I confirmed that it was javascript but what exactly is the harm?
• Three apparently parts of the javascript which apparently break the rules - 'character ";" not allowed in attribute specification list.' The script works perfectly and even if it didn't it's 100% non-essential.
• Links with an ID which is already defined. Yes I know you're not supposed to have multiple elements with the same ID but when the script monitors clicks via link ID and a link appears twice... whaddayagonnado?

So there's my terrible and non-conformist web page in a nutshell. Which works perfectly in all major browsers. And without CSS support. And without images enabled.

It's perfectly possible to code a design with hundreds of tables (which will significantly decrease the chances of anything but a bog-standard web browser from getting to your content successfully) and a god-awful font/colour combination which requires a microscope to read and it will still validate. That is miles off 'accessible' and yet many designers don't seem the slightest bit aware of the fact.

A green box does not equal an acccessible website. Don't pay extra for it. Pay extra for someone who knows this because a genuinely accessible site increases the possible audience and the likelihood that visitors will return.

/rant

[kyleposey]

Web standards is more than just making code that will pass a test. Web standards allow websites to scale across platforms & display mediums. Web standards (through Accessibility standards) allow disabled or impaired folk to browse the web easier. Web standards (through css) allow websites to be re-skinned in a fragment of the time.

Web standards is more than just a notch in a designers belt. It's the focus of producing a website that scales.
- Creating a standards based website will allow the developer to completely redesign a website, without ever touching the html.
- Creating a standards based website will allow the developer to easily modify the page's DOM.
- Creating a standards based website will separate form (html) from style (css) and function (javascript).
- Creating a standards based website allows the site to break-down easily for browsers or displays that do not support the full html markup (lynx, pda's, some tablet pcs, etc)

If anything, coding with web standards does not benefit the designer/developer, because it means that once he produces the site, anyone can maintain it. Whereas not coding with web standards locks the designer in because of their proprietary preferences on coding.

[Kalina]

Great post Kyle.

[kyleposey]

Glad to help out

[LazyJim]

Also it's not just about here and now on any single projects or any single developer's preferences, following the stanadards will enable future technologies you couldn't even imagine to work.

Dom: So if you don't know how, if, or how many people would be helped if you fixed your validation errors this means it doesn't matter? Wrong!

[Dom]

Originally Posted by LazyJim

Also it's not just about here and now on any single projects or any single developer's preferences, following the stanadards will enable future technologies you couldn't even imagine to work.

Dom: So if you don't know how, if, or how many people would be helped if you fixed your validation errors this means it doesn't matter? Wrong!

I'd love to know how any of those 'issues' I mentioned will genuinely affect users, feel free to enlighten me!

FWIW I do make sure my code is valid when designing sites from the ground but in the instance of the site I mentioned, which is powered by 3rd party software, there really seems to be no gain in spending time hacking away just so it will validate. I would hack away at it if the markup could realistically decrease accessibility however that is not the same thing.

Many of these evangelical validation obsessed web designers seem to live in their own fluffy little world assuming everyone will eventually be desperate for validating websites, but the truth of the matter is that it is only a concern to a minority and until there are some very significant quantifiable benefits it isn't going to make it onto most people's list of project requirements.

I think validation is essentially a good thing but it isn't even close to the definition of usability and if you look at the designers who have usability as their USP they are not focussing solely on validation - it's just one tiny element of a big picture.

Edit: By way of a little experiment I tested a couple of pages from useit.com to see if they validated. Both failed:

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 151 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

And:

This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)!

Guess he doesn't know a thing about accessibility and doesn't care about his users, eh?

[Immo]

Making a website totally accessible and have valid markup doesnt take that much extra time once you have done a few sites in that way, its good to learn how to do it so that you can when you need to.

Its got to a stage with me now where every site I do is accessible and valid without me even meaning it to be.

[LazyJim]

Dom imagine how much simpler web site coding and compatibility would be if all developers and browser software stuck to the standards from the start of the WWW. A heck of a lot less complications and a lot more usable (for computer software, developers and end-users) would be possible and more common.

I don't want to turn back the clock - waiting for W3C to support the things we needed back then would take ages but we can get back on track now because standards make sense regardless of whether you can see immediate specific benefits !

That said, my pages/sites don't all validate.
Although I have decided to increase priority for validation, the visible and usable result right now is of greater concern most of the time.

I totally agree with you about the following: validation does not equate to accessibility or usability.

But in my book validation is a prerequisite basic fundamental requirement to accessibility and usability.