Why Standards?
- Using Web standards means no proprietary lock-in and a wider support base
- The browser market is actually shifting again; the new entrants are standards-savvy
- Page weights can be reduced by at least half, sometimes by even more
- Reduced page weight means faster sites and lower expenses
- Multimedium support and accessibility are much simpler
- They're 99% the same, really, so it's a 2-for-1 deal
- What about search engines?
- Standards don't hurt, and can help in small ways
Who's Using Standards?
- A sampling of a few small organizations...
- Microsoft , AOL , Chevrolet , ABC News , Disney Store UK , AT&T , Sprint / Sprint PCS , Kansas City Chiefs , Amnesty International , Los Alamos National Laboratory , and many more...
- In addition, there are countless personal sites, academic sites, government organizations, etc., etc.
- Bottom line: any site that's interested in improving user experience and reducing maintenance costs should seriously consider using Web standards
Aren't All CSS Sites Boring?
- This is an old stereotype that has no validity (along with "all CSS sites look the same")
- Early CSS-driven sites (mine included) were often boxy and plain, but that was due to the site designers, not the technology
- Canvas and paint gave us Bob Ross... and also Dali, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, Pollock, Seurat, van Gogh...
- Think back to the list of sites on the previous slide: are they all boring, or look the same?
- And then there's the CSS Zen Garden
What About Incompatibilities?
- Some problems do exist, but they're far less of a problem than they were, say, three years ago
- The biggest stumbling block is frankly Internet Explorer, but it's only biggest by comparison
- Various approaches (e.g. "transitional design") have emerged to help bridge the gap between browser perdition and standards utopia
- Sites can realize 90% of the benefits of Web standards while still maintaining consistent appearance
How Do Standards Help My Users?
- Honestly, it's all about the page weight
- Users don't care about your markup or how much CSS you use; they do care about how long they have to wait for a page to load
- The #1 factor in page response time is the raw number of bytes shipped over the wire
- Cutting page weight by 50% means the page takes about half as long to load (on average)
- Reduced server load helps, and reduced bandwidth consumption can mean real savings for large sites
Performance Profiling
- Using the Windows Performance application, we can actually see how pages do
- Tests were run on variants of a typical "portal"-type page
- 56Kb dialup connection used for testing
- Cache completely cleared before each test; page loaded and then re-loaded to compare uncached with cached performance
Profile: Initial Page
Profile: Whitespace Stripped
Profile: Simplified Structure
Profile: Non-Table Layout
How Do Standards Help Me?
- It's all about the (lack of) page complexity
- The lighter your markup, the less you have to worry about breakage when you edit it
- Content is much easier to find as well
- Design updates are much, much simpler
- Presentation is centralized, so a few files control the whole thing
- Design prototyping can be much faster
- Complete ground-up rebuild and redesign in committee in two months? Yes!
Are Standards Always Appropriate?
- In theoretical terms, absolutely!
- More practically, it depends on your particular situation
- Always weigh costs against benefits
- Look at your user logs!
- Remember that current site behavior may skew your logs
- Aggregate browser-share statistics are worse than useless: they can be deeply misleading
- Support matrices can be highly useful
- Often divided into full exp. / minimal exp. / raw content / upgrade page
Where Can I Find Out More?
- The Web Standards Project (webstandards.org)
- MACCAWS (maccaws.org)
- World Wide Web Consortium (w3.org)
- Recommended: "Buy standards compliant Web sites"
In Conclusion
- Web standards deliver a multitude of benefits
- The stronger and leaner your structure, the better for all your visitors
- Accessibility and multimedium support are much easier with Web standards
- Reduced maintenance and redesign costs provide extra long-term benefits
- Ancient browsers need not be completely frozen out
- The trend is definitely in the direction of standards, and away from browser-centric development
- It just makes sense
Rapid Prototyping
- As if all that weren't enough, you can also use standards-oriented design to rapidly develop design prototypes
- Wireframes, thematic variants, "live" Web behavior — all possible with a single development environment
- Redesign time can be dramatically shortened
- Browser workarounds come at the end
- Let's see a live example!
Thank You!
It's been a pleasure. I'll do my best to answer any questions you have.