September 21, 2003 | View Comments (0) | Design
The W3C is a committee that releases specs/standards for web technologies. Once these standards are adopted any programmer or technology company can create a product that revolves around them because they are open. One such standard is XHTML. Using XHTML on your site helps to keep your content in the present and future while allowing the past to see it. Browsers now support XHTML 1.0 as should future browsers. It might not be imperative now to create a site in XHTML when HTML 4.01 will serve the same purpose because it to is a standard. From personal experience, besides my code being cleaner when using XHTML, it is also more readable, which can be very helpful when troubleshooting. Also, since XHTML is an extension of XML who knows how you may be able to manipulate your code in the future.
As a designer you know that if your site follows a standard you are opening it up to the largest audience possible. If they are using a device or program that does not support standards then you have done the best you can. The Internet is an open standard, so why shouldn't our sites be? If we all support standards then we are all supporting an open playing field. The most important thing on the web is the content anyways which has no standard.
To check to see if your site follows the W3C standards you can validate your pages with the W3C validators.
Sometimes as a designer without any major disabilities (blindess, deafness, etc...occasional stupidity) it is easy to forget that some of my readers might not have the same advantages as my other readers. It is easy to design for the person who can see the screen like I do, but what about the individual who uses a screen reader to listen to my content? There are web standards for accessibility that should be followed today. If you do not like the reasons stated in the section above for following standards then take note of this. The British government is beginning to place heavy fines on sites that do not conform to their accessibility guidelines. Creating a site that ignores accessibility is like not putting a physically disabled ramp on a building that has 10 stairs to reach the entrance.
Apple was once top dog in personal computers back in the early 80's. They lost their market because IBM didn't see PC's as the next big thing and opened up their architecture. They made the IBM PC standard where anyone could follow and build their own computers. Now neither IBM nor Apple are top dogs in the PC area. Developers in software did not like to create software for Apple and IBM PCs because they were different standards. One was open and the other proprietory. Open standards are where people flock. That is where the train is taking us so it is best to get on now. Web technologies like HTML, XML, CSS are not the things to sell because these are open standards. They put everyone on equal ground. The thing to sell is the content and that is easier knowing that your users and readers are using tools that adhere to standards.
Another example can be found when looking at BBSs from the late 80's and early 90's. They dominated the online world with their proprietory ways and then the Internet hit big with its open standard of communications. Not too many people use BBSs today.
I do not know if I could educate anyone on what semantics are better than the quizzes provided by Dan Cederholm over at Simplebits. But I will try to give a basic definition
Semantics are the placing of elements in a document that serve their intended purpose within the context of the document.
The W3C created the <p> tag to implement paragraphs within a HTML document. There is no reason to use a <div> tag in place of a <p> tag if your intended purpose is a paragraph. Semantics just means using each HTML element for its intended purpose. The big problem here is when you start to try tableless CSS designs because their is this need to want to use <div>'s in place of <tr>'s and <td>'s. Well the cool thing is that most of the time you do not even need to add these elements because you can just stick a class or id within the html element itself.
As has been noted by many others you can create a standards based site that does not have any semantic value. However, it becomes extrememly difficult to create a semantically rich document that does not follow standards. For example, when I create a paragraph with a <p> tag I need to create an ending <p> tag because semantically I need to know when that paragraph will end and the next element will being. The beauty of XHTML is that the majority of it focuses on closing tags that you have open. Therefore semantics can lead to standards. The hard part is just trying to nail the semantic value of each element.
You can build a standards compliant site with tables. You cannot build a semantically rich site with tables because the intended purpose of tables is for tabular data. Accessibility wise I am sure browsers prefer CSS based designs. You can get a standards compliant site at the expense of accessibilty and semantics. However, when you build using CSS layouts it is possible to achieve all three.
According to Holovaty's excellent get content size size site you can see that Whitespace uses over 62% (at the time of this writing) of its size on content. Search engines love this. That is the advantage of CSS-only design. Content becomes the focus.
The three elements of web standards (accessibility), semantics, and CSS design are all separate entities. However, when all used in conjugation with each other they offer greater benefits for both users and designers than they would if used separately. For us advocates we must be careful in how we preach using CSS and standards. We cannot forget that CSS design does not equal standards or great semantics. We are better off promoting none if we are only going to promote one. The web is a collection of data and by using standards, CSS, and semantics we can more readily convert that data into information that will benefit everyone.
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