Why Your Website Should Be W3C Compliant

By: Gary Klingsheim

Why Your Website Should Be W3C Compliant

"Web standards" has a long pedigree as a buzzword (okay, "buzzphrase") but it really is a simple concept. All it means is that you're using the right coding standards as propounded by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The two most important aspects of this evolving set of guidelines are XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). The W3C says that the XHTML family is the "next step in the evolution of the Internet." They said this is 2003, too.

For good-looking and user-friendly Web sites designers have depended on any number of "hacks" to get the job done. Among the most common, one still being used today, is the utilization of tables to do a page layout. As the XHTML and CSS capabilities have improved, it has become easier for these hacker-designers to create Web pages that are attractive as well as compliant with current standards. How important is this?

Retrofitting or re-doing?

Still, businesspeople who care primarily about sales margins and profits might wonder how important it is to be compliant if things are working all right as they are. Are there benefits to standards-based redesigns? Are there good reasons why your Web site should be W3C compliant?

First of all, there are some design issues -- make that "designer" issues. It can be hard to find designers that can build a good-looking site that is also compliant with all standards. It not only takes more time to build that kind of site, which means more expense for penny-pinching business owners, but some designers just will not (or cannot) seem to get all the way up to speed with the underlying technology of what they are doing. They are making good visual presentations, and whatever they need to do for functionality, they will do, standards or no standards.

Hidden problems

Another reason there has been some lag in overall conversion to standards-based sites is the ease with which a non-standards-based one can be built. The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs like Adobe's Dreamweaver have made the designer's job a lot easier, without their having to learn a single line of any kind of code. The sites often are jaw-dropping gorgeous, and may even work pretty much smoothly, even when the underlying structure is something less than standards-based.

Bad code is not always visible in the preview (visual) work areas that designers use in these programs (they can show the code in another area). It doesn't take much to make your site buggy in one or more of the popular browsers, or even inaccessible for reasons that could be difficult to troubleshoot after all the work is done.

Standards at work

Web standards now allow a site's look to be separated from its written content, or text. When this is done right, your site's important content -- the message, not necessarily all the graphics -- is available to visitors using cell phones, netbooks, PDAs and other non-desktop browsers. Many of these devices have difficulty making sense of non-standard, table-based layouts and large images. One of the changes seen in what is called Web 2.0, or the second-generation Web, is the proliferation of platforms. There is no other way but standards by which uniformity across these platforms can be achieved. As a business goal, you simply must reach everyone who wants to reach you.

Retrofitting your site, or remaking it entirely, to comply with the current standards (meaning "somewhere between Web 2.0 and 3.0" at the moment) can mean leaving behind some very useful but non-standard plug-ins and add-ons. Any number of calendars, bulletin boards and other widgets that you have come to rely on -- that is, that your customers have come to rely on -- would have to be dumped. It may make more sense for some people to delay total standards compliance and leave the useful add-ins on the pages where they're doing a good job, at least until the widget's developers adapt them to current standards.

Lots of upside potential

On the other hand, having a standards-based site makes a lot of things easier, one of which is updating content and performing routine maintenance. CSS allows you to change global settings of color scheme, typography and other design elements with a few clicks. Since no style information is in the HTML anymore, the underlying code, whether you see it and understand it or not, is much cleaner and less bulky. This translates to smaller file sizes, faster uploads and downloads, reduced hosting costs (to a small degree, at least) and other simple but profound advantages.

Finally, Web standards will ensure that your site is accessible not only to your customers but to the search engines, too. Non-standard and poorly constructed sites can mask or mangle your content so that search spiders misinterpret it, losing you page ranking and listings. Your site's keywords will also be at risk, and there goes your entire SEO plan in one fell swoop.

Clearly, Web standards represent actual, tangible benefits to business. There is simply no other way to ensure that your site will look and act right. If it doesn't do what it is supposed to, your business suffers. Although standards are an ever-evolving thing, you should do your best to stay abreast of at least the major changes, without thinking you have to revise your design (or code) daily. Keep reading the W3C site and its press releases, and you will know what to do -- and when.

Moonrise Productions is a custom web design company specializing in custom web development and design. Whether you need web application development or flex development, contact us and we'll get it done right.

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