Section 1.1. What Are Standards?


1.1. What Are Standards?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) creates and oversees the development of web technologies, including XML, HTML, and their numerous applications. They also keep their eye on higher-level issues such as making content accessible to the greatest number of devices and users, as well as laying a common foundation for future development, thus making web content "forward compatible."

The W3C is not an official standards body, but rather a joint effort by experts in web-related fields to bring order to the development of web technologies. The W3C releases its final word on how various tasks (such as HTML markup) should be handled in documents called "Recommendations." Most of their recommendations become the de facto standards for web development. There are other standards bodies that also affect the Web and the Internet at large, including those described next.


ISO (International Organization for Standardization)

The ISO is a true standards organization that manages more than 10,000 standards, including everything from information systems and character sets to the dimensions of 220-size film and the grain size of coated adhesives. Their seal of approval helps keep commerce and information technologies compatible world wide.


IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)

The IETF is an international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet as a whole. It publishes Request for Comments (RFCs) that define how things are done over the Internet, including FTP, TCP/IP, HTTP, and email.


Ecma International

Previously known as ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) , this is a European association for standardizing information and communication systems. Ecma International manages information technology standards, including ECMAScript, the standardized version of JavaScript.


The Unicode Consortium

This body manages the Unicode standard for multilingual character sets.


ANSI (American National Standards Institute)

The ANSI covers a wide range of true standards including ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

1.1.1. The Standards Process

The Internet was built on standards. Because the Internet isn't owned and operated by one person or company, decisions regarding how best to accomplish tasks have traditionally been made by a cooperative effort of invention, discussion, and finally adoption of the way to handle a particular task.

Since even before the Web, Internet standards such as protocols, naming systems, and other networking technologies have been managed by the IETF. The process begins when a need for functionality is identified (email attachments, for example) and a person or group proposes a system to make it work. After a discussion phase, the proposal is made public in the form of an RFC. Once the kinks are worked out and agreed upon, the technology becomes the standard. This, of course, is a greatly simplified explanation. If you are interested in learning more about the standards approval process or in finding out what new technologies are currently in development, the IETF site (www.ietf.org) provides an excellent overview.

1.1.2. A Bumpy Beginning

The Web was subject to the same development process as any other Internet protocol. The problem was that the explosion of excitement and opportunism of the early Web caused the development of HTML and other technologies to outpace the traditional rate of standards approval. So while the W3C began working on HTML standards in 1994, the browser software companies didn't wait for them.

To gain control of the browser market, the Netscape browser popped up on the scene with its own set of proprietary HTML tags that vastly improved the appearance of web pages. Microsoft eventually responded with its own set of tags and features to compete with Netscape, and thus the Browser Wars were born. Both companies are guilty of give-the-people-what-they-want mentality with little regard for how that would impact the medium in the long term. The problem only got worse as web design grew beyond simple HTML to encompass richer web technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, and DHTML.

As a result, we have inherited a slew of tags and technologies that work only in one browser or another as well as elements (<font> being the most notorious) that do nothing to describe the structure of the document. This flew in the face of the original intent of HTML: to describe the structure of a document's contents, not its visual presentation. While web standards are better established now, the W3C is still compensating for years' worth of bogus code still in use.

It didn't take long for the development community to say, "Enough is enough!" and demand that browser creators slow down and abide by the Recommendations set forth by the W3C. The champion of this effort is the Web Standards Project (WaSP, www.webstandards.org), a collective of web developers established in 1998. They pushed hard on the browser developers, tool developers, and the design community to get on the same page. Their actions seem to be paying off, as over the past several years, the standards effort has certainly gained steam.

1.1.3. Standards Support Today

The good news is that the current version browsers have gotten their acts together in supporting the available HTML and XHTML markup standards. Some browser-specific tags are still rattling around out there, but at least they aren't creating any new ones. The new challenge is consistent support for Cascading Style Sheets. Fortunately, the full Level 1 specification is supported by the latest browsers (and the vast majority of browsers in use). Unfortunately, there is still a bit of chaos around the implementation of Level 2 features such as absolute positioning, and no browser currently supports every available property and value in the CSS 2.1 Recommendation. Nearly every browser out there, even the standards-conformant versions, are known to have quirks and bugs, but all eyes turn to Microsoft Internet Explorer for consistent support, because it makes up the lion's share of web traffic. Browser bugs and the workarounds necessary for dealing with them are treated in detail in Chapter 25.

1.1.4. The Advantages of Standards

We're all still waiting for that ideal day when all browsers faithfully adhere to the W3C Recommendations, but that's no reason to put off creating standards-compliant content yourself. Standards offer wonderful benefits that you can begin taking advantage of right away.

1.1.4.1. Accessibility

Your web content will certainly be viewed by a variety of browsers and devices. In addition to the graphical browsers we're most familiar with today, it may be displayed by alternative devices such as mobile phones, handheld computers, or assistive devices such as screen readers for the visually impaired. By creating well-structured and logically marked up documents according to the guidelines for accessibility, you provide a better experience for the greatest number of users. See Chapter 2 for a look at issues related to competing browsers. Chapter 5 discusses ways in which the current web standards are being developed with accessibility in mind.

1.1.4.2. Forward compatibility

Future standards will build on current standards; therefore, content that is strictly compliant today will enjoy longevity into a day when deprecated elements and attributes are no longer supported. Everyone will need to part with their table-based layouts eventually. Why not start building sites the right way immediately?

1.1.4.3. Simpler and faster development

For years, web developers have needed to jump through hoops to compensate for the differences in browser support, sometimes resorting to creating several different versions of the whole site to cater to browser support quirks. Properly marking up the structure of documents and the strategic use of style sheets enables you to create one version of your content that serves all your visitors. And because the document controlling visual style is separate from the content, the design and editorial development can happen in tandem, potentially shortening production schedules. By cutting time from development schedules, standards compliance can make good business sense.

1.1.4.4. Faster download and display

Documents that use nonstandard HTML to control presentation (such as tables, font tags, and transparent images) tend to get bloated. Stripping out these elements and using style sheets for controlling presentation typically results in much smaller files that download more quickly and may add up to significant bandwidth savings. On top of that, modern browsers render pages faster in standards mode than in backward-compatible mode. Faster pages mean happier visitors. For additional information on the benefits of style sheets, see Chapter 16.




Web Design in a Nutshell
Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (In a Nutshell (OReilly))
ISBN: 0596009879
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 325

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