10 Reasons For Companies to Consider Web Standards
In my country, Saudi Arabia, there is almost no single company that considers web standards when designing their Web Sites. I’ve met a few people responsible for different corporate sites, and some of them weren’t convinced just yet. They think that it’s just an extra step, or a new fad that will fade away soon. And that what really matters is making a Web Site that just works.
After having a few conversations with local web coders/designers, I’ve concluded that they refuse to switch for the following reasons:
- More than 50% of them think that the only web browser out there is Internet Explorer (seriously), which leads to excessive use of propriety code.
- Recruiters, when seeking web designers, will require FrontPage 2003 (or Dream weaver MX) experience instead of asking for what really matters.
- Many (if not most) companies let their “graphic designer” handle web design.
- FrontPage 2003 is a Microsoft product, therefore they won’t even care about web standards unless Microsoft does.
- Their portal software is still using non-standard and/or propriety code.
- Lack of Arabic books, Web Sites and tutorials on how to make standard-compliant Web Sites. I’m not sure if they even exist.
In this post, I’m going to write why companies should make modern, standard-compliant Web Sites. And by “modern, standard-compliant” I mean:
- Separating web pages’ structure (HTML), layout (CSS) and behavior (JavaScript).
- Writing valid, standard (not propriety) HTML/CSS code.
- Writing standard, cross-browser and unobtrusive JavaScript code.
- Applying good coding practices, which make documents accessible, cleaner and flexible.
Note that the following reasons do not cover all of the advantages. If they don’t convince you, however, then I honestly don’t know what will.
1. Reduces the size of Web Pages significantly
Replacing those codes containing 6-levels deep nested tables with clear, straight-forward, semantic HTML code would significantly reduce a document’s size, since the latter use much less markup. This means that site visitors will be able to download web pages in a noticeably faster speed, especially when the CSS file(s) containing layout information is downloaded only once by the browser.
I have personally converted a layout from table-based to table-less, which reduced it’s overall size from ~15 KB to ~3.70 KB.
Most of Internet users in Saudi Arabia are still using Dial-up; A company shouldn’t turn off customers with bloated HTML documents and heavy graphics/flash.
2. Increases server-side scripts’ simplicity and reusability
Server-side scripts and web applications would need to output only minimal HTML data that is always guaranteed to work. For example, instead of outputting a paragraph this way:
echo '<p color="blue"><font size="5" face="arial">this is a paragraph</font></p>';You would only need to output the following:
echo '<p>this is a paragraph</p>';Besides the fact that </font> is a deprecated tag, the first example would force you to use that specific font color, size and family in that paragraph unless you explicitly specify otherwise. The second code will just output a plain simple paragraph, leaving formatting for CSS to handle, which means that the exact same output could be used for different interfaces. It will also make it much easier for web designers and developers to work together.
3. Future-proof
Using a valid, standard-compliant code insures that a site will always look the same in future versions of web browsers. It will also make it capable of working with technologies that require a well-structured code.
4. Encourages team work
Separating web pages’ structure, layout and behavior allows for more than one person to work on a single page. Whoever handles the HTML part would only need basic knowledge of HTML. The layout part would be handled by an experienced web designer, and the behavior part would be handled by a JavaScript coder (for example). Each person would be able to update his code without interfering with the other’s. This won’t only increase the quality of the work produced, but it will also save a lot of time.
Layout and structure separation also makes it possible for more than one designer to work on the same layout; Each designer could handle styling one or more portions of the page.
5. Makes debugging easier
If your web site doesn’t display well, then you know that either your markup or style sheet has a problem (as long as it’s not an Internet Explorer issue), and be able to use W3C’s validators to troubleshoot your code’s errors.
6. Makes redesigning more than 50% faster
Separating the structure from the layout makes it possible to redesign a whole website without even touching any HTML code. Old-style designers might find this irrational, but the CSS Zen Garden proves that it’s possible, and illustrates how flexible it can be.
7. More Speed = More income
A Web Development/Design company could deliver projects much faster and still make the same amount of money. So assuming that the company takes 10 projects a month and makes $xxxx monthly; They can double the number of projects and double the income.
8. Faster fixes/updates for scripts and documents’ layout.
What would a designer do when his manager decides that the site’s navigation should be on the left instead of the right? What if a bug was found in one of the site’s scripts? With the modern approach, he/she would only need to open up the CSS/JavaScript file, do the necessary changes and it will effect the whole site. Same thing goes with updating; one can instantly use an updated script by swapping it with the old one.
9. Cross-browser
Internet Explorer isn’t the only web browser; there are other popular web browsers such as FireFox that, unlike Internet Explorer, happen to be standard-compliant. Many clients are going to be using a better alternative browser, and greeting them with a broken layout won’t be nice.
10. You will do it eventually anyway!
Whether it’s now or later, it eventually needs to be done. The earlier it is the better.
In the next post, I’ll perform a few tests on some corporate Web Sites to determine how good they were coded. You will see for yourself how ridiculously invalid their Web Pages are.
Good read, M. Specifically on the local issue.
Good article,
I’m doing it allready, but i hope it will help others to do it
have you any examples of those websites? and have you some webdesign links of saudi arabia? thnx
You complain about the lack of Arabic texts. Where can one find the text of this article in Arabic?
Thanks for the feedback Egor and Shani.
nomo, I’m going to show some samples this week. What do you mean by “web design links” though? like web design companies?
Tzafrir, I’m preparing an Arabic version of this article to post it in a technical Arabic blog, even though i’m certian that there will be little to no interest.
nice article…the reasons you outlined for not switching are valid for a lot of countries besides saudi arabia as well.
developing corporate sites or applications sometimes requires us to support really old browsers like ie5.0 or even netscape 4.5(!) where using css for positioning is not an option.
for such cases, you might like to refer to jeffery zeldman’s hybrid approach (http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/read/) where tables are used to provide structure and css for styling.
with broadband becoming widely available, i’m sure we’ll see more people upgrading their browsers or switching to opera/firefox.
Salaam Mashhoor,
great article and tips, I enjoyed reading it. I am also in KSA (teach at e-commerce & web development KFUPM.edu.sa), went through some of your thoughts and MOST definately feel your pain.
Actually I gave an assignment to my students to go through the TOP 100 companies in Saudi Arabia and see just how many of their sites are following web standards. It is a sad scenario. E-Mail me sometime, mfahmed at kfupm dot edu dot sa - there are companies I know that are looking for “good” developers.
Mustafa Ahmed
Great article!
jinesh is right, these are definetly applicable all over the planet. Im writing an article for a Norwegian website myself right now, and was looking for some inspiration, and this was it!
Jinesh, I’ve checked Zeldman’s approach; It’s the same thing in my opinion. You’re still using tables, which are meant for displaying tabular data, for the layout. It’s never going to be as flexible nor as clear as a CSS-based layout’s code.
Mustafa, I’m glad that you actually teach your students the right stuff. Each year we get more graduated students with lots of misconceptions about web design.
This is definitely a world-wide issue, but I’ve noticed that a few companies in different parts of the world already switched to CSS-based and standard compliant layouts, such as Windows Vista’s website. Sure, it doesn’t validate, but it did a pretty good job in my opinion.
Great article - I really liked it. I wrote something similar in my Web Publishing Using LAMP lecture’s “Designing for Compatiblity” section. ( http://xrl.us/ni34 ). You give many other important arguments which I missed or generalised.
Like Tzafrir, I’m living in Israel, where many websites are horrifying as well. I had to switch banks because my original bank blocked Mozilla-based browsers. But the situation is getting a bit better, at least with the really important sites.
I talked with an American teen on the IRC, and he told me that most of the sites there are also of the sort that only works properly with MSIE. A Norwegian IRC correspondant said the same thing about Norway. However, some American sites are large enough so they care enough about the minority, and also tend to employ more clueful programmers.
Thanks for the nice article! I’ll mention it in my blog.
What we should really care about is keeping the customer happy and giving them solutions while making it easy for us to update and advance respectively. I think there should be balance between sticking to standards and swaying away from them. At the end of the day, “they are more like guidelines” than anything else