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wii
Free ASP Hosts Moderator
Denmark
2632 Posts |
 Posted - 29 March 2005 : 10:28:58
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I wrote this topic in another forum also, but I would like to read the Snitz community thoughts about this:
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I read about it everywhere: CSS validation and XHTML validation, make sure the code is correct according to those sites and all that !
But what if I just check using different browsers, wouldn´t that be just fine ? I test on the following to make sure my sites work for most people:
IE
Opera
Firefox
Netscape 4.8 (to some extent)
To my experience most sites don´t validate correctly using: http://validator.w3.org/ - but they work fine on the browsers above anyway, so what´s the deal about web standards ? |
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Shaggy
Support Moderator
Ireland
6780 Posts |
Posted - 29 March 2005 : 10:41:07
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Personally, I just see them as a challenge - I mastered HTML a long time ago, so to keep myself from getting bored I started enforcing standards on myself to try and keep things interesting. If I can't get something to validate and it does work in all browsers, I'll roll with it anyway rather than waste time on a workaround. Beyond that, I've never seen what the big fuss is about coding according to one specific set of standards; there's more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes - there's no right way or wrong way to write HTML and CSS, only the way that works.
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Ranko
Junior Member
400 Posts |
Posted - 29 March 2005 : 11:27:09
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Most sites work because desigeners tell them not to intepret the code strictly.
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-gary
Development Team Member
406 Posts |
Posted - 29 March 2005 : 11:31:59
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quote:
Originally posted by Shaggythere's no right way or wrong way to write HTML and CSS, only the way that works.
Not exactly. A site written to spec is (in a perfect world) guaranteed to display correctly in any browser on any platform. The spec is designed to work and is the reason the specs exist. One of the big pushes for standards is access for the disabled which practically no one bothers to even learn about, but is handled in the standards. The biggest push you see across the web is developers trying to force the hand of the browser writers to more fully support standards so that testing in multiple browsers doesn't have to continue and workarounds for different browsers need not be implemented. |
KawiForums.com
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D3mon
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1685 Posts |
Posted - 29 March 2005 : 15:12:53
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The 'code soup' that we usually see on the Internet today is a product of a web designer's struggle between the wishes of profit-making companies to promote themeselves (read: Microsoft, Netscape, Macromedia, Adobe etc. adding to the exisiting 'standards' in a bid to provide glamourous new features that only their browser/system can work with) and his/her own wish to make their job as simple as possible (and therefore essentially increasing his/her 'profit' of one kind or another, be it time or money.)
Previously, a designer's choice was either to completely ignore other browsers and only code for IE (since most everyone used IE) or spend A LOT of time writing his/her code to work correctly in other browsers, as the various browsers interpreted the same code in different ways.
Standards is mostly about moving forward and improving.
- XHTML - aims to 'tighten the belt' on the extraordinarly verbose code that currently lives on the web. In doing so, it can minimise the amount of code sent to the browser, which reduces bandwith usage and vastly simplify the process of building web sites for the designer. Ultimately, the standards will move to XML, which is very tight code and evidence of this can be seen in the changes made to create XHTML from HTML.
Additionally, with a much tigher code set, different browsers will have fewer ways to mis-interpret the code. This will enable browsers to become much thinner applications. How long did IE6 take to install last time you did it?
- CSS - The ultimate goal of CSS is to completely seperate content (the words in your page) from presentational mark-up like <font > tags, which alter the way the content looks. The advantages here are many: Browsers that are not capable of rendering CSS will present clean, unformatted content which is still readable, and browsers that are capable are much less likely to mis-interpret the designer's intended layout of a document. Designers can change look and feel of a whole website in a few minutes by changing just the stylesheet and not every page of content. Stylesheets can be defined for a range of display types that it might be viewed in, for example when printed, or viewed on a TV set.
- Validation - is what makes all these things come together. While your code might look to be XHTML and CSS compatible, a few errors scattered here and there mean you're back to square one. Validation issues mean that browsers are forced to potentially mis-interpret your code again and re-introduce all those cross-browser problems. Standards mean nothing if no-one is checking them. What good would health and safety standards be in a restaurant if nobody came to inspect the kitchens?
Good luck trying to make a web site accessible without these! |
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"In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won" |
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
Posted - 29 March 2005 : 17:11:04
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I truly believe the lack of adherence to the web standards results from Microsoft having made it's browser the de facto standard. As they don't care enough about them, they haven't really been adopted. As there is no market pressure, the situation will remain much the same for the time being...
Mozilla could have a role there, but they chose not to follow all the standards either.
Standards are very important, however, and some of them have changed the respective markets in a very significative manner, either when the standards were set before products began to appear (take the IEEE 802.x standards for wireless networking) or due to market pressure (DICOM medical imaging standard for example). However, sometimes manufacturers simply choose to try to overrun competitors before agreeing to a standard (VHS vs. Beta, for example). Then it's the market that dictates what becomes a de facto standard. It's a bit like this in the web arena... |
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wii
Free ASP Hosts Moderator
Denmark
2632 Posts |
Posted - 31 March 2005 : 10:15:45
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| Just for the challenge I decided to use validated code for my next web project, no doubt it will take longer to do, but I like the separation of HTML and CSS for layout, it makes the filesizes smaller. |
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D3mon
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1685 Posts |
Posted - 31 March 2005 : 14:16:18
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I think you'll be surprised how many cross-browser bugs just seem to disappear when coding 'validated'  |
Snitz 'Speedball' : Site Integration Mod : Friendly Registration Mod
"In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won" |
Edited by - D3mon on 31 March 2005 14:19:45 |
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wii
Free ASP Hosts Moderator
Denmark
2632 Posts |
Posted - 06 April 2005 : 06:52:39
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| Loads faster too. I made the same site first using tables and then another one based on CSS and validated code, and the CSS loads about twice as fast. |
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D3mon
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1685 Posts |
Posted - 06 April 2005 : 09:20:58
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| yes, problem with IE is that, when using tables, all the content within a table has to be loaded before the whole table can be displayed. This usually results in an entire page showing as blank for a few seconds before it is displayed - reader usually gets bored and moves on. |
Snitz 'Speedball' : Site Integration Mod : Friendly Registration Mod
"In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won" |
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D3mon
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1685 Posts |
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wii
Free ASP Hosts Moderator
Denmark
2632 Posts |
Posted - 06 April 2005 : 12:45:43
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| Thanks, the second link I did know about. There are many great resources about XHTML and CSS online. |
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wii
Free ASP Hosts Moderator
Denmark
2632 Posts |
Posted - 31 May 2005 : 06:36:25
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| My latests 2 sites for clients are now tableless XHTML/CSS - I would recommend everyone to go this way when creating a site. The sites loads much quicker than before (using standard HTML and tables for layout), and Google seems to index the site faster and with higher ranking - these 2 last points alone makes it worth it. |
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D3mon
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1685 Posts |
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wii
Free ASP Hosts Moderator
Denmark
2632 Posts |
Posted - 31 May 2005 : 11:56:33
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| Looks great in text-only browsers, but I wouldn´t use that as a reason for using XHTML/CSS, the amount of users using other than IE/Firefox/Opera on these particular sites is very very little (less than 0.1%). |
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