building your site to last

For many organizations, the web is a big leap forward: an opportunity to communicate in a new way with customers, employees, investors, and the media. Your web site, then, should be an investment in your future.

But most sites are built to work exclusively in web browsers this year's web browsers. And that's short-sighted. At some point (perhaps sooner than you think) you're going to want your information to appear in other display systems, like handheld computers, or to integrate with backend databases. You may want it to work on screen readers for the blind or on future applications we can't anticipate.

Most sites are built to work exclusively in web browsers this year's web browsers. And that's short-sighted.


At first, this may not seem relevant to you after all, you're building a site for the web and may not have long-term plans for it. But especially for large institutions it's important to take the long view. If you're going to the trouble of building a site, and spending thousands or even millions of dollars on it, you should think about all the ways you might eventually want to use the information.

Ideally, your site should work with

  • Past, present, and future web browsers

  • Older "legacy" databases and content systems that predate the web (think of the databases you search at the library)

  • New technologies with different types of displays, like handheld computers and web-enabled cell phones

  • Display systems for the blind, including screen readers and braille browsers

This may seem like a pipe dream. But in fact, it's possible, even today, if you follow web standards.

Developed by the industry group, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), standards lay out a set of guidelines for how sites should be built. They don't dictate how a site should look or work only how the pages should be structured. The goal is to both standardize web production and improve compatibility with past, present, and future systems.

why standards are needed

To understand the need for web standards, it helps to review how sites are currently built and why.

During the rapid commercial development of the web from 1994 to 2000 web designers and builders didn't have the luxury of standards. The web was expanding so quickly and so dramatically that the technology couldn't keep up. Developers had to do their best with the limited technologies available to them.

So they stretched and bent HTML to do things for which it wasn't designed and spent substantial portions of their time developing elaborate hacks and workarounds just to make their pages work.

The result is that most web sites are built using a mish-mash of HTML directives, all aimed at producing a site that looks a certain way in today's browsers. The commands in HTML are used in ways that bears little resemblance to what they were designed for. (For example, designers frequently use the HTML tag <ul> which is meant to set off a list to indent text and create a margin.)

The problem with this visual orientation is that the HTML code gets very complex and very specific: The data is structured to look good in a web browser and only a web browser and this renders it useless to other types of applications.

The madness that is web-page markup was necessary at the time, because there weren't any other options. But now it's short-sighted. With the advent of standards and the support of new technologies it's possible to create sites with a logical structure and a much longer shelf-life.

how web standards work

The theory behind web standards is that sites should be built in a more standardized way, to improve compatibility with past, present, and future systems. This would make sites more accessible in the short term, and more durable in the long term.

To accomplish this, web standards propose an important shift in the way sites are built. They call for a change in the basic language used to mark up web pages from HTML to XHTML and recommend designing with stylesheets rather than tables or font tags.

Standards recommend that sites

  • Use XHTML to structure pages instead of HTML. The two are very similar, but XHTML is more precise and more portable. It can be understood by other systems and software, beyond the web browser.

  • Use stylesheets for design instead of font tags, tables, and other assorted tags. This makes the page structure logical and fast, and allows it to be interpreted by other systems.

The reason web standards are effective is that they separate content from presentation. XHTML is used to identify each element within the content ("This is a headline." "This is a paragraph.") Stylesheets define how each page element should look. ("A headline looks like this." "A paragraph looks like that.")

Because content is separated from presentation, different systems can display the same content differently. When content is pulled into a device other than the browser, its presentation can be redefined. A screen reader may read it aloud, beginning with site sections and headlines. A Palm Pilot may put all the headlines in a tiny little list. But they can both work from the same content.

so what's the hold-up?

There are a lot of persuasive arguments for following web standards. (See why you should follow web standards, p. 186.) But designers and developers have been slow to get on board. Why?

Why sites are slow to adopt standards:

  • They haven't found time to retrain. Standards redefine how sites are built, and web professionals have to learn the new way. But it's hard to find the time when you're always scrambling to hit deadlines.

  • Stylesheet support still isn't perfect. It can be time-consuming and frustrating to get a stylesheet-based design to work. "Browser support for stylesheets is good, but not perfect," says designer Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards. "So some designers get frustrated and give up especially if they're detail-oriented. But there are (standards-compliant) workarounds for browser differences, and members of the design community are great at sharing these workarounds with each other. Once the workarounds are known, problems of browser difference largely vanish."

  • Some designs don't work in stylesheets. Designs that are based on a strong grid are better suited to tables. So some designers have taken a transitional approach, using stylesheets for text and tables for layout.

  • Some designers don't consider their site a long-term investment. They don't care whether it will work three years from now.

  • Some designers don't care about accessibility. They don't mind if their site doesn't work in voice and braille browsers

  • People don't like change.

lesson from the trenches: why you should follow web standards

graphics/186fig01.gif

"You should use web standards whether the client requests it or not as a matter of professional integrity."

Carrie Bickner New York Public Library

graphics/187fig01.gif

"My philosophy is 'Show, don't sell.' The most persuasive argument for standards is a good site."

Jeffrey Zeldman Founder, A List Apart

The question's been debated for several years now: Should web developers be expected or even required to build sites in accordance with industry standards?

Web standards, established by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), call for a fundamental shift in the way sites are designed and built (using XHTML rather than HTML, and stylesheets rather than tables or font tags).

Many site owners have resisted the standards, but others needed no convincing. Carrie Bickner, for example, immediately saw that standards ensured a longer lifespan for digital information. Because standards-compliant sites are built using XHTML, they'll be more compatible with both older database systems and future devices we can't yet anticipate.

As a librarian and webmaster with the New York Public Library, Bickner understands the importance of preservation.

"My first job at the New York Public Library was at the reference library," she explains. "The collections there range from the latest scholarly material to rare special collections. And so I handled a lot of things that were very old some of them in good condition, some of them not. And I always had to think about how to strike a balance between providing access to an item now and preserving it for the long run."

"So someone would ask to photocopy a book. And I'd have to look at it and say, 'Boy, this binding is already cracked. I'm sorry, I can't let you photocopy this. But I'd like you to have access to the information, so maybe we can take photographs of it.'"

"So, I was always balancing those two concerns: access now versus preservation over the long term. And I see the same exact thing happening with the web. We want our pages to look great now on the current generation of browsers. But I'd also like these pages to look good three years from now or five years from now on whatever device we're using then. I'd like them to look good on a Palm Pilot, I'd like them to read well on braille browsers and audio browsers. So I've got this big picture view that I feel responsible for keeping."

Longevity is a major concern for libraries and other institutions with large digital archives. But the investment in your future isn't the only reason to follow web standards. Great-looking, fast-loading pages are another.

Standards call for a stylesheet-based design, which is a departure for many designers. And many are skeptical about its potential. Not Jeffrey Zeldman.

Zeldman, who just wrote the book Designing for Web Standards (New Riders), is one of the most prominent proponents of standards-compliant, stylesheet-based design. All the sites he creates for clients are now standard-compliant and the rich-looking, but fast-loading sites always get an "I can't believe it loads so fast!" response.

"Clients are always impressed by how well the site works, how quickly it loads, and by the fact that they can update content without worrying that in so doing, they'll accidentally destroy the layout."

"My philosophy is 'Show, don't sell,' Zeldman said. "The most persuasive argument for standards is a good site."

But Zeldman has other arguments, as well. Standards, he says, improve web sites on many different levels. And the arguments against them are outdated. "Too many designers and developers still think each browser or device requires unique markup and its own set of stylesheets," Zeldman says. "This misguided belief results in pages that weigh too much and take too long to load, and that fail for many users."

Still, web developers have been slow to adopt standards. And many blame their clients, saying they don't care or haven't heard about them. But Bickner doesn't buy this argument. It's the responsibility of the consultant, not the client, she says, to learn the industry's best practices.

"If I hire you to put in a wood floor in my apartment, I don't care what kind of preparation you do," she explains. "I just want the wood floor to look good and wear well. And it shouldn't be up to me to think about how you did it. Same with web standards. If you want to give a client a site that's going to work now and for at least the next three years, you should probably use web standards whether the client requests it or not as a matter of professional integrity."

8 Reasons to follow web standards

  1. It's an investment in your future. Sites that follow standards will be easier to adapt to future browsers, databases, handheld computers, and other devices we haven't thought of yet.

  2. It saves a lot of production time. You may have to invest time in learning XHTML and stylesheets. But you'll make it up later. Stylesheets make production far more efficient, allowing for quicker markup and easy changes.

  3. It looks great. Loads fast! Sites built using stylesheets can be gorgeous and eye-catching, making use of typographic treatments you can't otherwise achieve. But thanks to a clean structure no messy tables, no need to repeat and re-repeat style for text the pages load much faster, and work more consistently. The savings in speed and bandwidth can be staggering. ESPN, for example, cut 50K off each page when it converted to a stylesheet-based design. With 40 million pageviews/day, they saved an astounding 2 terabytes in bandwidth per day (1 terabyte is a million megabytes!).

  4. It makes your site more searchable. Sites designed with stylesheets are structured logically and can be more easily interpreted by search engines. This can improve your search rank, and therefore visibility.

  5. It makes your site accessible. If you design your site with stylesheets instead of tables and font tags it will be more accessible to sight-impaired users.

  6. It may help you comply with the law. Don't make me bring up section 508! If you're a U.S. government site or if you receive funds from the federal government you're required by law to make your site accessible to those with disabilities. Standards help.

  7. Your site will work on any browser or web device. Sites that follow the XHTML spec will work in earlier web browsers. They may not look good, but they'll work. And that's more than you can say for most non-standard designs. "With simple, correctly authored, structural markup, you can serve every browser and Internet device from Internet Explorer 6 to an old Newton hand-held," Zeldman says.

  8. It's good for the industry. As Zeldman says: "The medium shouldn't evolve with duct tape." Following standards can be your contribution.


Dig Deeper

building your site to last, p. 184.




The Unusually Useful Web Book
The Unusually Useful Web Book
ISBN: 0735712069
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 195
Authors: June Cohen

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net