Discuss: Where Our Standards Went Wrong
by Ethan Marcotte
- Editorial Comments
2 SEO sells web standards
Search Engine Optimization is the easiest way to sell web standards. All the other benefits from web standards can be dismissed, but the benefits from valid semantic code for SEO is possibility not easily passed.
When talking about benefits of good web standards to clients they usually lean forward when they hear the benefits for SEO and usually start asking questions right away. Explaining other benefits such as accessibility is so much easier after that.
posted at 08:09 am on February 27, 2007 by Lasse Larvanko
3 Untitled
interesting article about Validation and the top 50 sites
posted at 09:12 am on February 27, 2007 by gareth jones
4 Untitled
I´m validating most of the pages that I create. It´s not only to be ready for the future, except the non compatibility problems of browsers to webstandard. It is also important that you can nearly be sure that bots of searchengines can read the page.
posted at 09:47 am on February 27, 2007 by Katja Schiemann
5 validation and javaScript
While this is not a selling point to clients its also important to remember that without valid code there is no guarentee that any javaScripts traversing and accessing the DOM will function as desired!
posted at 12:40 pm on February 27, 2007 by Ross Bruniges
6
Search Engine Optimization is the easiest way to sell web standards.
Thanks for weighing in, Lasse . I agree that SEO can be a compelling selling point, but there has been some debate regarding its relationship to web standards. And I think the traditional argument relies more on maintaining a good code-to-content ratio, rather than relying on valid markup/CSS.
But more importantly, I think it lapses into some of the same errors as the other “sexy” points: it’s an end-run around establishing a real business case for the proper care and feeding of valid code. After all, selling CSS isn’t the problem these days; selling standards is.
While this is not a selling point to clients its also important to remember that without valid code there is no guarentee that any javaScripts traversing and accessing the DOM will function as desired!
I think that’s true in theory, Ross , but I’ve personally found that my DOM scripts are surprisingly resilient to invalid pages. Have you found otherwise?
posted at 03:40 pm on February 27, 2007 by Ethan Marcotte
7 Brilliant
One of my favorite ALA articles to date.
posted at 04:07 pm on February 27, 2007 by Saint Matthew
8 ASP .Net
ASP .Net seems to be the biggest problem we have. Admittedly it is getting better, but it is frequently frustrating to see a nice clean page suddenly filled with inline javascript and invalid id attributes.
posted at 05:52 pm on February 27, 2007 by David Owens
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David: I don’t have much experience with ASP.NET, but it looks as though it’s possible to configure it to produce valid XHTML [ 1 , 2 ]. Perhaps some more back-end folks could weigh in, whether it’s .NET or another technology.
posted at 06:02 pm on February 27, 2007 by Ethan Marcotte
10 It's not that hard...
Great article. In response I’d like to say that with a proper plan, and a basic understanding of design, a site can be created to standards very easily.
Tools are not our enemies. I work within Dreamweaver 10-12 hours a day, and it is quite easy for me to develop a site that conforms with valid code, doesn’t have to use tables, and can be very device independant.
The key in my opinion is to put in the time and effort to plan a site out, before simply jumping in and throwing content around. It isn’t hard, but it does take a solid plan and quality organization.
posted at 06:04 pm on February 27, 2007 by Wes Linda
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1 Poor Tools
One problem I am faced with a lot is that there are no good tools that I can give to my clients that don’t end-up creating valid tag soup.(1000 nested tables is still valid code but not fun if you want to maintain it and wastes bandwidth.) So far the only thing I have found that creates good semantic and valid code is a text editor and a person that knows what they are doing.
Validation is a great development and testing tool to make sure that your syntax is correct but it can’t fix your semantics. Your semantic markup is where your true benefits come in to play: Accessibility, lower bandwidth, and easier maintenance.
My hat is off to those who are promoting standards and trying to get them implemented. Sometimes I think there couldn’t be a more frustrating job in the word than front-end developer but then I remember you guys.
Good article, in an uphill battle like this it is always good to be reminded why we do what we do.
posted at 07:31 am on February 27, 2007 by Nick Morgan