January 13, 2004 | View Comments (21) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: Why I decided to stick with standards and other things.
I sit down and get ready to build a website. I check the user requirements. I check my own design to make sure it fits the requirements. I check the IA to see if it could be improved. Usability is always an issue so I must go through that. Finally I get to check to make sure my site follows standards and is an all CSS layout. Whoops, almost forgot accessibilty as well.
Web design certainly has changed over the years. Or has it? People still ignore all the things I mentioned above. Over 90% of the designers in the world still use tables and could care less about the "other" browsers. Don't believe me? Go read some of the posts at Sitepoint's forums and see for yourself.
Why even bother worrying about all of these things? I mean does it matter that my site has some semantic value and that I can parse it with a validator? We all know that IE is still the dominant browser, so it only makes sense to build for that. I know my site inside out, and if the user can't figure it out then that is not my problem.
I could build 5x the amount of sites you build if I didn't have to worry about all of these things. I should just go back to designing the way I used to design. Back to whipping sites out in dreamweaver whose code becomes impossible to fix later (I know, I know it's much better now). Back to cutting off over 40% of my audience. Back to thinking that being a designer just means I design the site and nothing else. IA is for information architects and usability is for the consultants. Standards are simply for geeks who like to appear cool to the rest of their friends.
So why don't I go back to being like that? I thought hard about this. I used all the reasons that everyone else uses about how the web is for everyone and that CSS saves bandwidth and semantics are key. But there was always an argument against it. Finally I decided I design sites with all of these things in mind because that is what felt right with me and I don't ever plan on going back. Plain and simple.
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/104
Yeah some good hard numbers would be better I guess, but I think if you look over all the sites on the web, CSS based ones are far and few between. The 40% for the browsers come from my own stats for this site. Not as scientific as one would like for sure and even I would be hesitant to believe them, but this wasn't really about the numbers. It was more about why I care about standards, css, usability, IA, and accessbility.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Yeah, it's not easy to find CSS-based sites. I have tried.
There are some "cool sites" repository* I visit and almost all of them are built with tables or with Flash. I guess some aspiring web builders will try to copy their idols and we get more table-based layouts or Flash sites.
The fact that there designers who care about this stuff is enough to show that the field is maturing. There is a way to know the good from the bad. But someone ought to do real research. If the standards clan think it is right, than there is nothing to lose.
I don't know about your stats (sounds like an RPG), but Whitespace is getting more and more exposure by the comment count (hit or miss, eh?). If anyone has children or little brothers and sisters. Do let them see this web site. The next generation.
Do not despair. One day, children around the world will sing the hymn of CSS and standards. Haha. ^_^
*
http://www.linkdup.com
http://www.moluv.com
Zelnox
"Standards are simply for geeks who like to appear cool to the rest of their friends."
Guilty as charged. :(
You're right about it just feeling right though. After you've designed a valid and semantic site, you don't have to live in constant fear of opening up the design in anything that isn't IE.
The idea of designing with all these "standards, css, usability, IA, and accessbility" in mind is sorta like the argument of whether you do your job for money or for the love of doing it. Or maybe it's just taking pride in your work.
Jack (http://boxofjack.com)
About 4 or 5 months ago, I didn't care about standards, or CSS, and didn't know much about standards either. One day I got bored, and decided to install pMachine and then shortly after that Moveabletype. I saw it uses a CSS file, and decided to teach myself CSS. While surfing the net, and starting from the beginning, I started reading something that kept recurring - web standards and XHTML. I wanted to create a site that was on the cutting edge, and I wanted to teach myself new tricks.
I discovered that Jeffrey Zeldman's book was the best place to start, so I got it, and read it. I'm glad I did, and I'm glad I learned CSS and web standards, because it has made designing so much easier, it's fantastic. I could never go back to doing the Dreamweaver/tables thing again. I personally love manually hand coding everything in Notepad, so naturally this style of designing suits me.
The future of the web looks a lot better with CSS and web standards in the picture, and the blog community is at the forefront of this revolution. And yes, it does feel right, doesn't it?
Matt Burris (http://www.goodblimey.com/)
Many things seem pointless now because they're meant for the future. They are not widely present to be useful, but if we don't implement them now, they'll never be. We're designing for the future. May now be the future.
I spend most of my time on the web reading sites from savvy people with cleverly-designed sites. When I visit a site done by some clueless angency, I can feel the difference. All the small things we do do amount to something. Badly designed sites hinder user experience. I got used to all the fancies web-savvy sites present, and I miss them elsewhere.
Take RSS for example. The first people providing rss feeds probably wondered what was the use for that if no one used rss readers/aggregators. But now it's quite popular and is very useful.
(Although I still find it a bore that people outside tech/webdesign circles writing blogs / news rarely bother providing a feed)
Take xhtml. It's the same as html, so really, why bother? Well, I for one have found it very powerful and elegant to generate websites and manipulate them using xml tools. But it really isn't very useful with aged dev plataforms or CMSs.
Acessibility features have often proven themselves quite helpful to me, even though I'm not disabled.
The importance of usability and IA goes without saying.
Standards are important everywhere, not only in the web. Whenever my cellphone battery dies when I'm at someone elses home I wonder why oh why I cannot use their charger. There is a lot of discomfort is take for granted. It needn't be so.
Now on to your site usability: what's up with this comment box? It's impossible to type anything larger than a paragraph here. And this goes to all blogs. Answering the question on your other post, I rarely comment because comment box usability sucks profoundly. It's impossible to keep track of what you're writing. A larger box with a better font would go a long way.
Caio Chassot (http://v2studio.com/k)
for css sites head to http://andybudd.com/blog/ - he posts links to css sites quite a bit.
the bookmarklets posted there are super as well...
charles (http://enure.net)
Standards-based design may be the next generation, but I think it's a long ways off before it will be common practice. We're the early adopters, the ones who design with it now, and we're going to remain as such for a while.
Matt, it's great that you came across Zeldman and consequently web standards, but how many other people are coming out of school with table-based layouts, spacer images and framesets fresh in their mind who never will hear that name? They're going to be part of the design community too, unfortunately, and more of them are going to stick with what they know rather than turn around and re-learn what they just got out of school for. I think we'll truly be in the next generation of web design when proper standards-based design is taught in schools. Not some, all.
Standards need to be fought for, same thing for proper usability, proper IA, proper accessibility, etc. We may have the right ideals going for us, but we've also got to contend with these other factors. The better Dreamweaver gets, the less and less new designers are actually going to know about the backend. Why sift through what may be hundreds of lines of code when you can draw a webpage that your client, not knowing any better, likes just as much?
It's my opinion, and hopefully that of others as well, that to keep things growing on the side of standards, we need to get more information out there that's available to the general population, to those people who will be commissioning websites down the road. The more informed they are on the topic (even if it's only how standards effect the bottom line), the more likely they are going to look for it and seek it out. We can't wait until they've decided to hire us before preaching what we know to be the best way of doing things, that information needs to be more available overall to everyone involved in the web creation process.
Anyway, just a diatribe from the peanut gallery :)
jarrod (http://textbased.com)
As a visitor who's looking at this site in Links (http://links.sf.net/) I can see very good reasons why sites should be authored with web standards. Standards-compliant sites are, in general, a joy to read, while old-school sites can be utterly unusable. And of course, if it's good for Links (and other text browsers) it's good for screen-readers too.
mjr
Why code with semantics? XML (and all derivations including XHTML) and HTML are markup languages. This means we put data in there and use tags to structure it and tell the parser what type of data it is.
If you're using <table> to layout your pages, you're incorrectly labelling your data, which, in the future, could lead to problems.
You're also not using the markup language for its intended use. It was invented for a reason; this is likely to be the best reason.
I believe Tantek (www.tantek.com) had some reasons for semantics, but looking through I can't find it...
David House
"As a visitor who's looking at this site in Links (http://links.sf.net/) I can see very good reasons why sites should be authored with web standards. Standards-compliant sites are, in general, a joy to read, while old-school sites can be utterly unusable. And of course, if it's good for Links (and other text browsers) it's good for screen-readers too.
Posted by: mjr at January 13, 2004 10:07 AM"
--
This is the first time I've ever seen proof of anyone using a screen reader or a text browser - not that I didn't believe it.
Anyone ever get an email from a blind user thanking them for making their site so easy to navigate/read?
charles (http://enure.net)
Standards are also about another important thing: making sure that the right organization has control over them.
If there's one thing we've learned about the web over the past decade, it's that standards aren't determined by the association that stood up make them. They're determined by the organization with the most control over a given medium. Microsoft has definitely gained enough control that they can make their proprietary technology widespread. This is measured in the number of sites that "require" Internet Explorer.
By this, I don't mean standards in the strict sense. I mean the de facto. That which everyone does.
If Microsoft gets any more control over this medium, what's to stop them from gradually introducing an incompatible alternative to XHTML? CSS? Not much, if they do it right. Ten years down the line, we could be coding our sites in MSHTML, while the W3C continues to churn out recommendations that nobody uses.
That would have to be a strong reason for my use of standards. I want to make sure the right organization has control.
Dris (http://dris.webhop.org/)
jarrod: Which is exactly why I don't go to school to learn this stuff. ;) Everything I know about computers, web design, etc. are all self taught. I feel it's the best way for me to learn, and to stay on the cutting-edge. Schools these day tend to teach the wrong things, whether it's history, web design, or politics.
It is sad that schools aren't teaching standards in design. That's why everytime I meet up with someone who designs or is interested in the field, I spread the excitement to them of web standards and the beauty of CSS. When I finished Zeldman's book, I found the nearest friend who could use it, and sent it to them. It's the type of book that should never gather dust sitting on a bookshelf. At this point, the best thing we can do is spread the word like Zeldman is doing.
Matt Burris (http://www.goodblimey.com/)
Some schools are teaching. Way back in 2000 I was taking some web design classes at a local university in Milwaukee. One of the classes was on CSS and the teacher really taught us about standards and accessibility. He's the reason all the sites I design now are done with web standards.
Jonathan
Here are 900 sites that use CSS:
http://www.meryl.net/css/
I am sure there are a few more out there ;)
Paul, I think it's important to distinguish between those who care and those who will simply never give a damn. I can theorize that 90% of those who don't give a damn are probably not building and designing web sites for a living and if they are, well, they won't be for too much longer.
I agree with your points that web designers don't just design, they do IA, they understand standards (even if they are not responsible for the markup), they try to follow usability and accessibility guidelines. In short, they make the effort and they really understand the medium.
Unfortunatly the majority of those who don't give a damn who do web design as a hobbie probably out number the professionals who do give a damn... a good 3 to 1 ratio at least. Sad, yes, but I manage to deal with it.
I have learned that you lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. I can prach the benefits of CSS until I am blue in the face, but if they are not modivated to learn or too stubborn to listen, well, it's time to let it be and let them learn the hard way.
Nick (http://www.digital-web.com)
Matt,
for my Software Engineering degree, I have to take a course called "User Interfaces Design". The web was only a part of the whole course, but we did study web patterns and standard usability stuff. I guess the course looked at things from a top-down perspective, so we did not go into standards for actual web code. (btw, the prof's course web site is not standards compliant. hehe)
Zelnox
Charles has already mentioned Andy Budd's blog (http://andybudd.com/blog/) for a great list of CSS sites.
Even better (I think) are:
The Daily Standards
(http://www.dailystandards.com ) - which lists a new CSS/XHTML compliant site every day.
and
CSS Vault (Gallery)
(http://www.9rules.com/cssvault/ )
Kate
Is every one forgetting that I run the CSS Vault or do some people just not know about it :)
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
(Comment totally unrelated to this discussion, so feel free to delete, Scrivs: the function that converts URLs is erroneously including trailing parentheses, so for example (http://slashdot.org) is referring a website called "slashdot.org)" instead of "slashdot.org". Shouldn't be hard to fix. If you're not up on Perl, contact me privately and I'll help.)
Eric TF Bat (http://flurf.net)
Hey that's MT's code. I usually go in there and just fix them myself. Thanks Eric.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
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#1
You have references to support your numbers? Are there studies done on what you mention? I will take them "just for the sake of argument", but still. Sure, I can read a forum. But it does not feel as serious as reading someone's research.
P.S. I don't remember seeing google ads before. >_
Zelnox