this is the personal blog of brandon quintana.

Tom Ashworth has written a great article about web standards on HostReview. The question asked is what are web standards and should a business be compliant? Ashworth goes on to say that web standards are those specified by W3C and specifically the use of tableless layouts via XHTML and CSS.

As stated in the article most sites still use what he calls a “hack” which uses tables to layout elements on a web page. This method is not standards compliant. Tables for the most part should only really be used for displaying data.

Ashworth says that the disadvantage is it is difficult to find designers who create standards compliant sites that are also attractive. He felt that many designers do not adhere to web standards because it takes a lot of time and there is a lack of appreciation on the client end. I find that this is very true. For the most part, businesses and individuals alike take layouts from their graphic designer and hire an individual like myself to create the standards compliant templates for their designs. It does take a lot of time to do, but I feel XHTML/CSS coding is one of my best skills as a web developer. I am willing to take the time to create these layouts and some of my clients do appreciate the extra time taken, while some do not.

Ashworth then goes on to say that there has been a slow conversion to web standards due to the use of WYSIWYG editors such as Dreamweaver. Most modern developers I know use Dreamweaver strictly as a text editor, but I know a lot of people could care less what the code looks like as long as they get something on the web. I think this is the wrong approach to projects. Every planning step from the beginning to the end of a web project is important. Poor code is hard to maintain and is usually not scalable.

Since XHTML/CSS layouts separate content from layout, it makes it easier for those using screen readers, mobile phones, and PDA’s. This is important because it opens the site up to a greater audience. The more the site is unusable, the more money the business is losing.

With XHTML/CSS the maintenance of the site is much easier just because the code is a lot cleaner to work on. When I take on a maintenance project, I fear table layouts. I find it much easier to maintain a site using XHTML/CSS even if I was not the original creator of the code. On the other hand, it is somewhat of a nightmare to sift through poor table layouts and that tends to lead to a lot of unpredictability.

Web standards compliant sites are more accessible to customers as well as search engines. If the search engine has an easier time reading the page, it will cache more content. With XHTML/CSS the engine sees all content and all layout elements are not read in external files.

So now I will explain my take on the question. Tom Ashworth’s article is very well written explaining very legitimate points. I think he hit it right on the dot. If your business is not looking toward web standards, your competitor is and you are going to lose business to your competition. The choice of moving toward XHTML/CSS standard compliance will improve the efficiency in your website both for you and your users.