The Case for Web Standards

1
The Case for Web Standards

• (A reusable presentation for website managers
  worldwide)

2
Agenda

• Benefits of web standards
• Lower your development and maintenance costs
• Future-proof your sites
• Reach more customers and improve the user
  experience
• Considerations
• Conclusion

3
Its about reducing costs, future proofing, and
customer acquisition and satisfaction

• By using web standards as defined by the W3C,
  companies can reduce costs and gain many
  strategic advantages. These advantages are
  detailed in the following slides.

4
Lower Costs Much easier to manage a site-wide
look and feel

• Getting rid of the painful mix of content and
  presentation by separating them
• Use Strict HTML and CSS to enforce the separation
• Store presentation in a separate file, aka
   Style Sheet 
• It is possible to update style sheets (and change
  the layout on all pages) without updating the
  documents.

5
Lower Costs Simplified development and deployment

• Using CSS for special effects on text makes ones
  web site much easier to update.
• Well-formed (valid) HTML code reduces quality
  assurance costs
• Errors are spotted by W3Cs Validator
• Rendering differences still exist, but are
  limited
• Asking a vendor to produce a standard-compliant
  web site is a way to ensure a measurable quality
  control on what is delivered. See
  http//www.w3.org/QA/2002/07/WebAgency-Requirement
  s

6
Lower Costs Standards use less bandwidth, load
faster

• Separating presentation from content using style
  sheets reduces the size of documents. Therefore
  web pages load much faster, which translates into
  a better user experience.
• CSS has made it possible to transform
  table-based layouts into CSS-based layouts.
  Typically this reduces page size by 25 to 50.
• Interview with Andy King (Author of Speed Up Your
  Site Web Site Optimization)

7
Future-proof Standardized code

• Content needs to be ready for non-PC devices
  (phones, handhelds, etc.)
• Using valid standards-compliant markup ensures
  that data will still be re-usable for a long time
  on many devices, as specification on how to
  interpret the standards are well documented and
  here to stay.
• Coding to standards does not mean producing less
  compelling content.
• As a matter of fact almost anything taking
  advantage of proprietary extensions can be done
  in a standards-compliant way.

8
Future proof Extensible architecture

• Using Strict HTML and CSS paves the way to XML
• XHTML is an XML-compatible version of HTML
• Tools and standards are becoming available for
  leverage in the near future
• SVG Scalable Vectors Graphics (Animated
  graphics)
• MathML to manipulate Mathematical equations
• XSLT to transform data in an XML-language into
  another.
• These XML technologies have been built around
  interoperability.

9
Future proof Avoids lock in to particular
developers

• See http//www.w3.org/QA/2002/07/WebAgency-Require
  ments
• Most organizations have experienced difficulties
  in re-using code written by a former vendor or
  employee, because of undocumented "hacks" and
  specific coding practices.
• Valid standards-based code ensures that code is
  on par with best practices.

10
More Customers Better search engine ranking

• Separating presentation from content augments the
  information/markup ratio. Since most search
  engines rely on text placed on top of the page,
  using standards such as CSS give such web pages a
  higher rank.
• Using text and CSS to do special effects such as
  roll-overs instead of graphics also help.

11
More Customers Compatible with more browsers and
platforms

• Overall, 5 different rendering engines are used
  to surf the web in dozens of browsers on 3
  platforms.
• More and more browsers, other than Internet
  Explorer for Windows, are used to surf the web.
• Windows MSIE, Netscape Gecko, Opera.
• Mac MS-Tasman (IE/Mac) , Netscape Gecko, KHTML,
  Opera
• Linux Netscape Gecko, KHTML, Opera
• Coding to standards (instead one or two specific
  browsers) is then the only practical solution.

12
More Customers Accessibility

• Accessibility is a major mandate
• Section 508 in the US
• 2003 European year of people with disabilities
• Recent W3C standards (HTML 4.01, CSS, XHTML) have
  been designed with accessibility in mind,
  simplifying accessibility compliance.
• Your site better serves disabled people as well
  as those using non-PC devices, increasing a web
  sites effectiveness as a broad communication
  tool.

13
More Customers when customers are not turned
away

• Using web standards permits serving a single
  document, whatever the browser is.
• No customers are turned away because they have a
  browser not used while testing your web site
• Smaller web pages mean faster display, a very
  compelling thing for millions of users who are
  still connected via modems.

14
Considerations

• Support for older browsers
• Netscape 4 and IE4 have difficulties in rendering
  CSS-styled content.
• These browsers have major security flaws
  visitors should be encouraged to upgrade.
• Standards support by third-party application
  developers
• Enterprise application providers still coding
  proprietary, non-standards based code.
• Customers should request them to update their
  applications for W3C standards compliance.
• Standards compliance may not be a major task.
• IE 6 supports many standards and code that works
  in IE6 may work in other standards-compliant
  browsers.

15
Conclusion Its smart to invest in web standards
today

• Using standards today means
• Reducing cost of developing and managing content
• Reaching a wider audience (wider compatibility
  with browsers, accessibility, better ranking in
  search engines)
• Compliance with accessibility law
• Tomorrow
• Reduced lock-in to particular developers and
  vendors
• Reduced cost of maintenance
• Flexibility of presentation, including non-PC
  devices
• A door open to XML technologies and benefits

16

• To hedge one's product success and longevity
  bets, preserving a path to cross-platform support
  should be a development action item from day
  one. Eweek, If You Don't Build It, They May
  Never Come Dec. 9, 2002