Why web standards?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
As a web designer, I get asked this question a lot. My simple answer, which might seem glib on the surface, is this: They’re like green beans—they’re good for you.
For the uninitiated, web standards are a set of industry best practices, the purpose of which is to deliver web content for universal consumption—i.e., in a way both accessible and presentable to more people and more types of browsing devices. It levels the playing field for site design, and without layers of browser-specific hacks and workarounds, you can virtually guarantee forward- and backward-compatibility.
But does building a standards-compliant site provide tangible benefits to the client? Absolument! Lowered production costs? Check. Improved organic search engine ranking? Check. Cost savings on bandwidth and server space? Check. And when it comes time to revamp your site, your content can be easily repurposed and reused, thus realizing further savings on development and project management time.
So really, the question becomes, “Why NOT web standards?”
