Status
Not open for further replies.

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
There's been a lot of talk about standards over the last couple of years, so I was wondering, do developers really care?
Do your clients ask you to produce compliant sites?
 

ph3n0m

New Member
absolutely never - not one of the people I have made websites for has ever asked me for a "compliants standard" website
 

ph3n0m

New Member
well in my sordid past I would have done everything from "brochure-ware" sites to music/band based websites
 

ph3n0m

New Member
aye I do - but if I post them here maybe spoiltchild might critique them....hehehehe (and I couldnt stand the shame, embaressment, nervous bowel)
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
ph3n0m said:
aye I do - but if I post them here maybe spoiltchild might critique them....hehehehe (and I couldnt stand the shame, embaressment, nervous bowel)

Now now.. be nice
 

frankp

New Member
ph3n0m said:
absolutely never - not one of the people I have made websites for has ever asked me for a "compliants standard" website
Ay ay ay... I'm sorry but I don't accept 'not being asked' as a valid reason not to design to web standards.

I try to design to web standards - admittedly not always to the letter of the law, but certainly in spirit. In other words every page may not validate, but usually it's for a simple and (in my opinion) good reason.

Here's a good piece on why to use Web Standards, here's another really good view on using web standards.

From my own perspective I have myself found using Web Standards to greatly increase findability.

I personally think it's important to be developing to web standards, and as such I don't wait to be asked.

Most clients won't know to ask for a site designed to web standards... that doesn't mean they wouldn't want it if they knew the benefits.

i highly recommend looking into web standards and considering passing on the benefit of them to your clients!

Best of luck!
Frank
 

dahamsta

Member
I'd be a bit like Frank, perhaps a little less less... well, frank about it. ;)

I'll try to embrace new standards as they become generally accepted by the community, but I won't break my balls to get a page to validate; in fact I very rarely check. And to be honest, when I post a page somewhere for review and a standards-nazi starts ranting at me, I tend to switch off. Standards are great, but they're guidelines, not laws.

If I was asked to produce a standards-compliant website now, that'd be a different story, I'd go out of my way to do it. But I'd probably farm it out to one of the aforementioned nazis; and I'm not really in that market anyway. Most of my clients wouldn't know web-standards if it came up and etc etc.

adam
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Adam - if you aren't concerned directly about standards compliance, do you check to see if the site renders correctly in the commonly used browsers?
 

dahamsta

Member
Of course: IE, Firefox and Opera. If I remembered to start vncserver on my devel machine I usually login to that to check Konq and possibly Galeon too. The only issue is Safari and other Mac OS browsers, because I don't have access to a Mac. And it is a concern, I recently discovered that a WorldPay integration I developed for a client wasn't working on Mac for some reason. Pain in the hole. But the fact that it had been working for several years without anyone reporting a bug shows me just how many users in that particular market use Macs. (They also ALL - no exceptions - have cookies turned on, which should tell you something about the client base. Let's just say that the letters A, O and L feature heavily.)

adam
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Testing for Macs is a pain alright, as we don't have direct access to any.

One of our clients has launched a service which mitigates this issue, so I've been able to take advantage of it for testing any of the company sites and my own personal projects :D
 

rsynnott

New Member
Standards should be followed. Otherwise you get obscenities like a proprietary blogging system whose RSS feed gives dates in UK/Ireland format. Yes, really.
 

Paul Farnell

New Member
Well I guess I'd be one of these "standards purists" then. For every project I work on I'll use standards. Every single one. I actually find I can't bring myself to work on sites which are tables-based, it's just a horrible, horrible experience.

I'll use semantic code wherever I possibly can (heading tags in a meaningful order, sensible class/id names, minimising the use of ids and classes).

HTML and CSS code should be lightweight, meaningful, maintainable and (I think) "beautiful".

People who are truly web design professionals will conduct their work in a professional manner, adhering to these standards.

Folks who don't use standards aren't keeping up with the industry, and are therefore not (in my eyes) professionals.
 

dahamsta

Member
Standards nazis Paul. Called that because they think they're better than everyone else. Hmmm, that reminds me of something...
 

Paul Farnell

New Member
dahamsta said:
Called that because they think they're better than everyone else.

I believe web designers who use standards are better than those that don't. It shows an attention to detail, and a love of the medium.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top