E-Learning Concepts and Techniques

Chapter 11 – Web Standards

11.1 What are web standards?

Chontel Delaney

What are web standards?

Web standards are principles, established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other standards organizations. These principles are used to create and interpret web-based content and are designed to future-proof documents published on the Web and to make those documents accessible to as many users as possible. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in 1994 and is an international conglomerate where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards. W3C's mission is To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.W3C's primary means of accomplishing its mission is by creating web standards and guidelines.

Mr. Tim Berners-Lee was the founder of W3C in 1994 after he invented the World Wide Web in 1989 (Internet pioneers: Tim Berners-Lee).

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Why use web standards?

The benefits of constructing websites to web standards are that the site will tend to be (Johansson, 2006):

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What is WaSP?

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) was founded in 1998 with the mission of fighting for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. To accomplish such tasks, WaSP works with browser companies and authoring tool makers.

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11.1 References

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11.2 Who is involved in web standards?

Ryan Noel

...guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. W3C

There is a tremendous interest in web standards worldwide that nearly anyone interested in web development or design is in some form involved in web standards either actively by following standards or discursively by using web development software that incorporates web standards. Web standards have become the all encompassing guide to proper web development. Due to this need to standardize web development there are many special interest groups have formed like the University of Notre Dame Web Group to the 405 organizations that belong to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and many more, that research, provide tutorials, and define web standards. This section will attempt to introduce a few of the major organizations involved in web standards; however this is by no means an exhaustive list.

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World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web; W3C is an international conglomerate where 405 member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards.

W3C's mission is:

To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web (Jacobs, 2006).

The philosophy of the W3C is that for the Web to reach its full potential web technologies must be compatible with one another in order for hardware and software that access the Web to work together, they refer to this as web interoperability. To achieve this goal, standards are developed and serve as a guide to creating interoperable websites. W3C also offers free tutorials on their website on web development and design, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web (Jacobs, 2006).

For more information about W3C visit their website at http://www.w3.org/ .

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The Web Standards Project (WaSP)

Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. We work with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium (http://www.webstandards.org/about/).

According the WaSP website they are a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all. The mission of WaSP is to educate web designers and developers on the importance and the need to follow web standards. Since their inception in 1998 they have formed various task forces designed to meet this goal.

For more information about WaSP and the various task forces visit their website at http://www.webstandards.org/ .

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European Computer Manufactures Association (ECMA)

Founded in 1961, the European Computer Manufactures Association (ECMA) was created with the goal of standardizing computer operational formats, programming languages, and input/output codes. Although ECMA is not directly in the field of writing web standards, they do create standards for Information Communication Technology and Consumer Electronics which are often enacted into standards by the International Organization of Standardization (ISO). Why is this important? Industries create products that conform to ISO standards, in turn this means manufactures of Information Communication Technology and Consumer Electronics are producing products that conform to ISO and ECMA standards. Therefore a change in ECMA standards can create a change in web standards since the Web is delivered via the technology that ECMA standardizes. This means that web standards interest groups have to keep up on what ECMA and ISO are saying.

For more information about ECMA visit their website at http://www.ecma-international.org/ .

For more information about ISO visit their website at http://www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage .

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11.2 References

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11.3 Resources for Guidance on Web Standards

W3C Tutorials 

A great resource and guide to creating web standard compliant web pages from the organization that creates the standards. (http://www.w3.org/2002/03/tutorials)

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WaSP Learn/Tutorials 

WaSP is your one stop, easy digestible, informational site for web standards. From what are web standards and why you should use them, tutorials, articles and reviews, reference materials, and external sources, WaSP has everything to quickly get the gist of web standards. (http://www.webstandards.org/learn/)

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Holy CSS Zeldman! Links that will save you from an aneurism... 

Andrew Fernandez started collecting these links in 2003 on various topics. The resources are organized by category and there are links to nearly every topic that has to do with web development and design. (http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html)

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11. 4 How are web standards used in education?

Chontel Delaney

In 2005 the WaSP Education Task Force was created with the goal of working directly with institutions of higher education. Their goal is to help raise awareness about web standards and accessibility amongst students, instructors, administrators and web development teams. The objectives of the task force are as follows:

  1. Encourage instruction of web standards and accessibility best practices in all web design, interactive media, informational and computer science programs in order to prepare students for web-related careers.
  2. Promote the creation of standards-compliant, accessible public web sites and instructional tools. Understanding that legacy sites and tools exist, our goal is to help institutions aim for policies which, at a minimum, require that all new sites and instructional tools use valid, semantic markup and follow Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) accessibility guidelines.
  3. Liaise with institutions of higher education and related communities to promote and address the implementation of web standards and accessibility best practices through discussion, web standards users groups, and presentations as well as attendance and participation in industry events.

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11.4 References

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11.5 Web Standards for Designers

Brian Heisman

11.5 Introduction

I like to open up with a quote from Andrew Tannenbaum, The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. (www.sysprog.net) This is very true on many areas and concepts, but on the World Wide Web there are groups pushing to limit the choices.

To understand web standards for designers we first must review what a standard is. According to dictionary.com a standard is something, such as a practice or a product that is widely recognized or employed especially because of its excellence. Another version more in depth would be from Merriam-Webster Online, a standard is something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example; regularly and widely used, available; substantially uniform and well established by usage in the speech and writing of the educated and widely recognized as acceptable. (Merriam-Webster: Standard, 2006)

The rationale for having web standards would be to have a widely used and uniform view on website development.

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The Web Standards Movement

An article in wikipedia.com describes web standards as a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web (WWW). (Wikipedia: Web standards, 2006) What does this mean? The web standards for dummies answer would be - the need for consistent design on the web. According to wikipedia, it has only been recently that the term standard has been applied to the WWW. (Wikipedia: Web standards, 2006) The old way of building websites is out and the new dawn or movement of standards begins. We as designers must ensure that our site is being used and viewed properly, no matter what modality of computer system is being used.

There are groups or organizations that are preaching for better web practices. The Web Standards Project and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are two particular organizations that are leading the way to make the Web a better place to be. The Web Standards Project focuses on encouraging browser and web page editor makers to follow the standards in their applications. Whereas the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards. Both organizations work with companies, developers and who ever else develops products or sites on the Internet. Their goal is to develop protocols and guidelines that ensure the long-term growth for the Web.

At its core, the web standards are made up of three main components. The first is the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which is a universal system for referencing resources on the Web, such as web pages. The second component is HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which specifies how the browser and server communicate with each other. The final component is the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), used to define the structure and content of hypertext documents. (The Web Standards Project [WaSP], 2006) Without these components there would be no need for web designers. Without consistency there would be chaos and the Internet's capabilities would diminish.

Determination for the movement revolves around two particular concepts usability and accessibility. These areas affect everything about web design, browser support, companies that have developer software, and yes the average Joe who wants to view the Internet, also known as the end-user.

Usability is a huge concern for web designers. The site must be designed so all who view it will be able to navigate and understand what the site has to offer. Usability a term is used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human made object in order to achieve a particular goal. (Wikipedia: Usability, 2006) Usability can also relate to the efficiency of a tool which relates itself to web pages and sites.

Accessibility is another driving force for standards on the Web. We, the designers are creating sites that want to be viewed by the world, no matter who or what disabilities that individual has. Accessibility allows users with other types of browsers to access and allow voice or Braille to translate the material. This terminology is also directed through Section 508. In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible technology interferes with an individual's ability to obtain and use information quickly and easily. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. (Section 508)

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Advantages of Web Standards

Search engines use specific coding to rank and display sites, which gives you the designer a higher visibility on the net. The structural information present in compliant documents makes it easy for search engines to access and evaluate the information in those documents, and they get indexed more accurately. With a better search result you would increase your chances of the number of viewers, increasing your numbers and business at the same time.

Compliant documents can easily be converted to other formats, such as databases or Word documents. This allows for more versatile use of the information within documents on the World Wide Web, and simplified migration to new systems - hardware as well as software - including devices such as TVs and PDAs. (WaSP, 2006)

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Why? I am Just a Designer

As a designer, your main drive of creating, designing, developing a website is for people to have access and use it to its fullest potential. "Some people fear that standards are limiting. In reality, they remove much of the tedious labor involved in web development, and give developers more time and more flexibility to be truly creative. They are both open to future improvement and mindful of past technology." (WaSP, 2006)

Say you created a website for a customer, while spending hours of time testing and applying the site to a particular browser. Did you know that you just created a site that was creative and perfect, but only on that browser! Your choice, do spend hours redoing the site for each browser type or do you push for the needs of standards across browser windows. There is nothing more aggravating then spending time on a web design and having it distorted through resolution settings or browser windows or coding issues.

Writing web pages in accordance with the standards shortens site development time and makes pages easier to maintain. Debugging and troubleshooting become easier, because the code follows a standard. No longer do you have to worry about the coding and maintenance for several versions of code that are supposed to accomplish the same presentation. (WaSP, 2006)

Maintaining universal standards will allow the Web to survive while encouraging innovation to continue at its current pace. (WaSP, 2006)

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How can I follow the Standards?

Some of the newer products available for web development do follow most of the universal standards; still companies tend to do what is best for sales. The WaSP and W3C organizations work closely with companies who are interested in promoting standards for website development. One company that appears to adhere to most of the standards is Macromedia and their Dreamweaver software for the development of websites. Dreamweaver automatically writes the public DOCTYPE code on each newly created HTML document. As you can see below this line is recommended by the W3C.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
</html>

However, if you want stricter, more logical code, with presentation moved to stylesheets instead of old-fashioned presentational tags, use the strict doctype:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html40/strict.dtd">

The "stricter" the type, the more difficult it could be to ensure that you conform to the standards. The most commonly used DTD is the loose format, which gives designers a little more freedom when trying to be compliant.

Other standards are also applied in Dreamweaver when it comes to coding. However, your job then as a designer is to design the page, the concern or issue is that Dreamweaver at this point in time does not tell you when something is not conforming with the standards and the recommendations of the W3C. So how are you to conform to the web standards? Well the answer is to use a validator. You will read further about validators in this chapter.

You do have an option; you can choose to create sites without standards, but that might be an unwise choice. The most basic consequence is that you will restrict access to your site. How much business sense does it make to limit your audience to only a fraction of those who wish to be a part of it? For a business site, denying access to even small portions of a target audience can make a big difference to your profit margin. For an educational site, it makes sense to allow access not only to affluent, able-bodied school-children with graphical browsers, but also to children in regions with poorly-developed infrastructure who are best served by text-only browsing, or disabled students using specialized browsers. (WaSP, 2006)

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11.5 Conclusion

As web developers, we are constantly trying to address the problem of inconsistencies between the renderings of web pages by different browsers and browser versions. This necessitates either time-consuming double/multiple coding, or coding for a single browser which makes it harder, if not impossible, for some of the public to use the site. This situation will be made even worse with the advent of additional hardware and software which will be able to browse the Web, such as telephones, pagers, and PDAs. (WaSP, 2006)

Web standards are not picked randomly and they are created by established and well known individuals in this field. The standards are for the most part decided by representatives of the same people who use them - browser makers, web developers, content providers, and other organizations.

Writing web pages in accordance with the standards shortens site development time and makes pages easier to maintain. Debugging and troubleshooting become easier, because the code follows a standard. No longer do you have to worry about the coding and maintenance for several versions of code that are supposed to accomplish the same presentation.(WaSP, 2006)

Again you do have a choice, but it is as simple as looking both ways when you cross the street. Eventually, you will get run over by not following the most simplest of standards.

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11.5 References

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11.6 Validators

A Valuable Tool

As discussed in the previous sections, web standards are the driving force for the designer to produce accessible and usable websites. A Validator in general can be a very useful tool that will help the designer be more effective and compliant to the most current and common standards.

A validator is a computer program used to check the validity or syntactical correctness of a fragment of code or document. The term is most often used in the context of validating HTML and XML documents. (Wikipedia, 2006)

Luckily for the designer, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) whose a driving force in web standards offers free online and offline validator tools for checking HTML, XML, and CSS. With the growing movement of standards and designing the Internet with better quality websites most browsers are offering developer tools that include such validators. Firefox, an internet browser, has a terrific extension developer tool that allows the designer to check their site online or offline. This validator coincides with the W3C recommendations.

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Why use a Validator

Compliant code gives you the opportunity of validating your page with a validation service. Validators process your documents and present you with a list of errors. This makes finding and correcting errors a lot easier, and can save you a lot of time. (Dan's web tips, 2006) The issues of accessibility, visibility and usability are still the major reasons for standards compliance. The use of a validator will help in those efforts.

There are many reasons to write valid code and below are some examples:

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Validator Resources

Developer tools are offered in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Netscape.

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The Issues with Validators

The problems with validators are the standards itself. I realize we are promoting standards and that it would be great if they are followed 100% of the time, but we wouldn't be realistic. There are some good reasons not to follow specific standards.

Some of the validators are stricter than the others creating inconsistent results from tool to tool, as you can see from the tables below. Our recommendation would be to stick closely with W3C's recommendations for this will be the norm for most sites and browser services.

Another issue is that a validator determines which HTML standard to validate your document against by the DOCTYPE declaration at the beginning of your document. If the DOCTYPE is missing or incorrect, this will cause the validator to report errors, maybe weird ones like saying that <HTML> is an unknown tag. So you need to have the right DOCTYPE if you want your pages to validate. (Dan's web tips, 2006) What you see is what you get editors often forget to include this tag or integrates its own version.

Something you need to be aware of when you use a validator is the mistakes that you created intentionally. You do not have to change your creativity, but be aware how you might see it in other browsers. Coding can also be done correctly, just not according to the most recent standard, i.e. <strong> vs. <b>. In the older editor programs they tend to use <b> for creating the bold effect. Does this mean you have to constantly upgrade your programs every time they change a standard? NO, that would be too costly in the long run! The W3C doesn't change the standards on a whim; for the most part they remain consistent according to the technology that is available.

HTML Validation Results by WDG (Web Design Group)
Line 27, character 9: <script>
                             ^
Error: required attribute TYPE not specified

Line 54, character 8: <dsftop>
                             ^
Error: element DSFTOP not defined in this HTML version

Line 58, character 7: </head>
                            ^
Error: end tag for DSFTOP omitted; possible causes include a missing end tag, improper nesting of elements, or use of an element where it is not allowed
Results from W3C Online Validator
This page is not Valid HTML 4.0 Transitional!

Below are the results of attempting to parse this document with an SGML parser.

  1. Error Line 27 column 8: required attribute "TYPE" not specified.

    <script>

    The attribute given above is required for an element that you've used, but you have omitted it. For instance, in most HTML and XHTML document types the type attribute is required on the script element and the alt attribute is required for the img element.
HTML Validation online URL check by CSE Validator

CSE HTML Validator Lite generated 21 error messages and 0 warning messages when checking this web page. In fact, this web page generated so many errors that HTML Validator terminated the check before it went through the whole document. These problems could damage this web page's search engine rankings as well as cause viewing problems for visitors. It is highly recommended that any problems be corrected. Why validate? 

URL: <http://www.sulcosd.k12.pa.us>, Local Time: 10:21:25 AM, Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2006

A Selection of Messages

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11.6 Conclusion

Validators are a great tool and resource that can improve your presence with search engines and your HTML will render better and faster. Validators help you comply with the standards to make your sites more accessible and usable. When using a validator, try and be consistent and follow the recommendations of one particular, because from time to time they will pick up different coding errors. Be cautious of the DTD type that you use, loose is the most common and least restrictive. As a general practice you don't have to change all of your errors especially if the error was cause intentionally. One last note is that all of the validators that W3C has available online are free. So try a site and see how many errors the validator finds!

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11.6 References

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11.7 W3C: Keeping it Simple – Making it Accessible

Misty Townsend-Sweet

Today, all over the world, millions of people will use millions of computers to access millions of internet sites. While that in and of itself is somewhat mind boggling, consider this: nearly all of those net-users, regardless of time zone, language barriers, or type of computer being used, will, when visiting any one particular website, see exactly the same thing on their screens. To what do we owe this uniformity? The answer lies in web standards—an attempt by any number of organizations around the world to bring about a consistent experience for internet users. While it isn't feasible to expect every internet programmer or webmaster to use exactly the same formatting in exactly the same way, one hundred percent of the time, web standards attempt to lessen frustration, increase productivity and just make things simpler.

There is no shortage of groups and organizations attempting to standardize the formatting of web content. The World Wide Web Consortium, sometimes referred to as W3C, leads the charge by developing interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential (Technologies, 2006). It is the W3C that standardized the use of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) just to name a few (World Wide Web Consortium, 2006).

W3C was founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee (Web's inventor gets a knighthood, 2003). If that name sounds familiar, it should. Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web and is primarily responsible for writing the specifications for Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) (Uniform Resource Locator, 2006). Berners-Lee noted the need for consistency as more and more software companies were beginning to market any number of versions of HTML. The end result, of course, was inconsistency between web pages, causing a great deal of user frustration and a sharp decline in productivity as workers attempted to navigate uncharted waters. Berners-Lee's initial observations have led to the development of an international consortium.

The goals of W3C are lofty. Through the royalty-free standardization of formats, the organization strives to make the Web readily available to people around the world from diverse walks of life; increase the number of devices through which the Web is accessible; allow people to solve problems otherwise too complex; and to make web interaction more secure (The mission, 2006).

W3C's membership list is as impressive as it is lengthy and reads like a Who's Who from the pages of Fortune Magazine. Apple Computers, AT&T, The British Broadcasting Corporation, and Microsoft are all counted among the organization's 400 corporate members, as are Lockheed Martin, Macromedia and Sony Corporation (Members, 2006). It isn't, though, just big business that supports the consortium, as individuals from across the globe are also encouraged to join. Members are simply asked to take a leadership role in the future of the Web (About W3C membership, 2006). Pricing for membership, however, isn't set up to accommodate individual membership and can be prohibitive for the average computer user. Costs ranges from the lowest fee of $6,500 for non-profit organizations to the highest membership fee of over $65,000 for businesses with annual gross income of over $2,000,000.

In closing, support for W3C continues to grow, due in no small part to the increasing reliance on the Internet to conduct business. W3C's mission statement is one which should ring true for each person in any way involved with the use of computer technology:

To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web (The mission, 2006).

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11.7 References

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Last updated April 20, 2007

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