Discuss: Evangelizing Outside the Box: Web Standards and Large Companies
by Peter-Paul Koch
- Editorial Comments
12 The why and the how
Perhaps, we should take a deep breath, and ask those who haven’t adopted it, why they haven’t. Perhaps they are looking for different things out of it then we are, and are not finding what they seek. If we know more about the why, then we are better enabled to address it.
posted at 02:18 am on May 30, 2007 by Kat B
13 Having Examples to show
Back in the day when ALA had a forum called The Coders Forum we started keeping a list of sites that were changing to tableless layouts using css. This is the most basic kind of change in the move toward standards.
The list we started is still being maintained by Meryl Evans. There are examples of sites in many catagories that provide exemplary efficiency, as well as attractiveness.
The list is located at http://csscollection.com/
posted at 02:22 am on May 30, 2007 by Donimo Shriver
14 It's fun to work with A-I-G-A
I’m an American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) member, and last week, they sent me an “are you getting everything you want out of AIGA?” survey. I said — as I frequently do — that, no, I’m not.
I lamented the fact that AIGA doesn’t particularly reach out to the web community, even though every studio I know locally affiliated with AIGA has at least one web programmer. In my survey response, I specifically mentioned A List Apart, and its efforts to encourage a standards-based approach to web design.
For example, the AIGA communication I receive is rarely standards-compliant. Local AIGA chapters frequently set up small websites for events and whatnot. I see sites built with tables hither and yon. There’s nobody at AIGA — a voice supposedly weighted with authority in the design community — suggesting they do otherwise.
So, in AIGA, I conjecture, we have a group of people that are unwitting subscribers of “An Average List.” They might have learned about the web in 1999, and never bothered to update their skills, if the old ones still work. Some just don’t know any better.
There is a cavernous gap in AIGA’s Professional Resources directory when it comes to web technologies.
My suggestion is to reach this group through partnership with AIGA. Standards should fill that gap.
posted at 03:40 am on May 30, 2007 by Robert Palmer
15 It all depends on the management’s knowledge abo
If people work in companies where they have “web standards conscious� management it would be easier for the web developer to work in such a company. Every project developed by that company will consider the web standards would be included in the scope of the project. Every CIO reads “Back End technologies�, “Hardware technologies� and “Net work technologies� they are not aware of new the “Front End trends�,…. mainly the web.
posted at 08:36 am on May 30, 2007 by Sadiq Hussain
16 Comments on comments
A few comments on the comments:
First of all, despite my definition it seems that it’s not clear I’m talking about large website creation companies. Healthcare companies and multi-channel retailers are entirely different kinds of companies because they don’t make websites for others, they maintain their own. Web designers who work for them have serious problems, but they fall in Jeffrey’s category of invisible web workers, not in mine. These web workers are just not the subject of my article; they’ll have to wait for the results of the Web Design Survey.
John Young gives excellent advice on the companies’ pocketbook, but my plan was to make standards fashionable in management circles. As soon as something is in fashion, managers stop thinking about their pocketbook and start thinking about impressing their peers. Large companies have wasted enormous amounts of money on fashionable nonsense, and if we can harness that mechanism for the standards movement, we don’t have to talk about financial matters (at least, not at first).
Besides, I don’t like the psychological part of this solution. If we’d talk about pocketbooks, we web developers would unconsciously assume a humble, begging stance, instead of a proud “we know better than you” attitude. I feel that we need to assume this attitude; it makes more of an impression on managers than talking about finance, which we don’t know much about in the first place.
We have to make managers react to us and speak our language; not the reverse. How? By making our language fashionable.
I fully agree with Peter Uzzi that education is tremendously important, but it is not the subject of my article, either. Besides, as soon as enough large companies demand web standards, universities will start to change, too (slowly, yes, but surely).
“We [put the information out there] because we LOVE it. That’s reason enough. The rest will take care of itself.”
True, but is it enough? Recently I’m starting to doubt whether the standards movement in its current form will reach much beyond its current audience; that’s why I wrote this article.
That’s not to say we should abandon the old strategy; far from it. The old strategy will continue to serve us well, and the mechanism Amber describes will remain valid. We just need an extra component.
posted at 10:08 am on May 30, 2007 by Peter-Paul Koch
17 A new kind of non-techie language
Personally, having worked for a massive, large and large-ish company doing web dev I think you have to avoid seeing your targets as one large mass. Large companies are all very diverse. One simple difference is that some companies are web companies – in that they see the web as their business and other companies use the web because they have to. They’re not about the web, they’re about something else and are using the web to achieve their goals (selling etc…). In a company such as this, regardless of the size, there’s a bigger technical split amongst the staff. The web developers may only be a numerical minority.
The task is then to convince the managers and decision makers that web standards are a good idea. And this all seems like a whole lot of ‘Greek’ to them. The key perhaps is working out how to communicate to the non-technical decision makers the benefits of web standards. The effort is in devising a language that’s easily understood and working out ways of getting the message across. One of the best ways is perhaps to demonstrate the benefits.
posted at 04:31 pm on May 30, 2007 by Matt Newboult
18 What we need is branding
As soon as something is in fashion, managers stop thinking about their pocketbook and start thinking about impressing their peers
Very true. When a new technology/technique hits a certain threshold and becomes a buzzword, managers will demand it. They may not know what “Ajax” is, but they know they need it — it’s the Flash effect all over again.
Perhaps if “web standards” had a snazzy buzzword with the same ear appeal as “Flash” and “Ajax”? (Chazz? Swak? Spondulix?)
posted at 06:18 am on May 31, 2007 by Marla Erwin
19 Who's the target market again?
I don’t fit into this group, twice (day job in big media company, sideline getting a w2 site going), however i think i can vouch for and help clarify where the non-standards compliant types are.
We just hired a standards savvy front end designer after two months of searching. Recruitment agencies had no clue what we were after (they never do though but that’s another story). It may just be Melbourne, Australia but there’s a hell of a lot of table based designers out there. From my sample i’d say this archetype is someone who fell into web design because they once worked somewhere that needed it done – and they just followed the style of coding that they were shown. Often these were template driven sites – think of all those legacy CMSs that were bought in the late 90s and can’t afford to be replaced.
Fortunately this type of designer/developer is by nature pragmatic so I believe will eventually come into contact with the standardised world.
The other part of the target market I know about is Senior IT staff who are well versed in a variety of technologies. Again we’re fortunate because they’re easy ones to convert, just think about how standards compliance can improve load times (not to mention the argument killer SEO) and how that can affect the bottom line in terms of bandwidth.
So i say continue the good fight, we’ll get there in the end and don’t worry too much about those who aren’t that vocal about it – they’re probably helping spread the word to target groups like these just as effectively from behind the scenes.
posted at 07:31 am on May 31, 2007 by Steve Roberts
20 The word in the cave is usually Shhhh
As much as I try to push web standards; some of the designers I know, indeed some of the best, still create pages in tables and actually believe in them as a fast and effective way to get a design onto the web.
The very large company doing my current employers content management system decided to push out that system in tables… now they’re working for free to remove that issue.
People wont talk about the work they’re doing within large companies any time soon, there’s too many non-disclosure contracts and fear of reprisal and dismissal for people to openly say that my company is X and they’re doing Y.
I’m speaking from experience, I literally work in a dark room, with nasty artificial lighting. By the time I leave work at 5pm I don’t have any urge to churp on the internet about how were making a new semantic page for xyz. By 5 I’m only planning my tea.
So long as companies head in the right direction, the standards movement will engulf all those in the profession.
If you can put a money value in either savings or additional sales and profits that is more then the cost of implementation, any business will bite your hand off (hopefully returning it so that you can type).
So if we can all convince managers that W3C = £££ (or $$$) we’ll spark a revolution.
posted at 04:50 pm on May 31, 2007 by Chris McKee
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11
All right, let’s go. This is simply true: there’s no argument here. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. It’s like this in every industry. People who are passionately in love with their discipline, whatever it may be, advocate ways to do it better, and are listened to and adhered to only by those who are equally enamored of their discipline. And we know that, but we keep doing what we do because it’s WHAT we do and it’s WHO we are.
And then, one day, a designer says to another designer, for whatever reasons, “You ever read On Writing Well? You should read it. Good stuff.”
And then suddenly, this book that only other passionate writers used to care about became something designers, and artists, and engineers started reading. And what’s more, they started caring. They started caring about clear, strong, beautiful writing. These people who we’ve said for decades couldn’t even read—they started to care about the discipline of writing!
And so it begins.
We put the information out there and we keep advocating web standards in little articles and posts and coffee house conversations not because we feel compelled to take over the world or even the industry. We do it because we LOVE it. That’s reason enough. The rest will take care of itself.
posted at 09:07 pm on May 29, 2007 by amber simmons