Front and Center: Setting Standards

It has been said that the Internet loves standards that's why there are so many of them on the Internet.

Everyone wants to set the standards because whoever sets the standards, becomes, well, the standard. Makes sense, right? You didn't think Microsoft, Netscape, IBM, or Sun were doing this for posterity, did you?

I continue to read articles about "the next standard" in x, where the new standard is often honestly better (smaller, faster, easier, insert adjective here) than the standard but because the standard is…well…the standard, the new standard simply will never become the standard.

Am I confusing you? Good.

When does a new standard become the standard? When enough people say it is. How many is enough? That's the question of the ages.

I love Flash; I do. It is a great product and a lot of fun, and it is certainly the standard for online animation and multimedia. Macromedia continues to release press releases of considerable market penetration.

However, not everyone who comes to your Web site is going to be able to view your Flash animations. Not everyone who comes to your Web site is going to be able to view your PNG graphics.

Heck, not everyone who is going to visit your Web site is going to be able to view your GIFs (optimized or not).

A good Web master keeps on top of these issues.

We presented the major Web graphic formats in this chapter as they apply in October 2003. Although we presented them as standards, new standards might come and old standards might go. You are going to need to keep up-to-date on these issues and, eventually, make the final decisions on what standards you are going to use at your site.

And if everyone can't view your standard files, how standard are they?

The W3C keeps an updated page on the latest in graphics formats at http://graphicsnews.frontpagelink.com.