Web Standards Discussion Group

Bracciano

richardo wrote:

But the IIA have set themselves up as THE association representing the Internet in Ireland. Para 6 implies that they are promoting excellence, yet they fall at the first hurdle themselves. They at least should have checked the coding on their own site before accepting it from the developers.

Fair point, doing as they preach...

But I, like most I know, simply code pages that work on the major browsers/platforms, sometimes with escape hacks.
There are Standards - and there is Reality.
Granted it's a route that needs watching - like maybe having to change coding as new browser versions etc appear - but at the end of the day the major concern is that Joe Soap can see the site the way you intended.

Usability, including access for say visually impaired users, can remain important in that goal:
But that still doesn't mean you have to code to standards.
I'm aware of W3C standards and try to follow them, but unfortunately 100% compliancy will never occur between Microsoft/Mozilla/Opera vying for market share with proprietary features, features that webdevelopers may find useful
and W3C not sanction.

The other thing is that W3C often follow what the major browsers have implemented (and that's proved popular) ie the cart leading the horse, in terms of standards implementation.

mewso

The reality is that the more you design to standards the more compatability you will end up with between browsers. This is something alot of designers are not aware of. To comply to standards simplifies the design and is more likely to be cross browser compatable than you think.

I always tell people to read Jeffrey Zeldman's great book, Designing with Web Standards. Learn about the reality of standards before using cross browser problems as an excuse not to use them.

FranDrastic

musician wrote:

To comply to standards simplifies the design and is more likely to be cross browser compatable than you think.

As well as cutting down on the markup, big time.

one crude example:
<table><tr><td>pants</td></tr></table>

ugh....

becomes <div>pants</div>

tammy

I'd be interested in getting involved in something like this. Standards are going to make it here sooner or later and I'd like to be in the know when they do.

Eoin

FranDrastic wrote:

As well as cutting down on the markup, big time.

one crude example:
<table><tr><td>pants</td></tr></table>

ugh....

becomes <div>pants</div>

Please don't start yet another CSS v Tables debate, it has plagued this forum for long enough. There are reasons to use tables instead of CSS, and vice versa.

Using tables does not preclude valid markup, so probably best to leave it out of a debate about standards

pwd

eoin_s wrote:

Please don't start yet another CSS v Tables debate, it has plagued this forum for long enough. There are reasons to use tables instead of CSS, and vice versa.

Using tables does not preclude valid markup, so probably best to leave it out of a debate about standards

It is relevant though. The following is an excerpt from the WAI guidelines. (Both guidelines here are priority 2 so violating either prevents an aa or aaa rating, but does not prevent an a rating under these guidelines).

3.3 Use style sheets to control layout and presentation. [Priority 2]
For example, use the CSS 'font' property instead of the HTML FONT element to control font styles.
.
.
.
5.3 Do not use tables for layout unless the table makes sense when linearized. Otherwise, if the table does not make sense, provide an alternative equivalent (which may be a linearized version). [Priority 2]
Note. Once user agents support style sheet positioning, tables should not be used for layout. Refer also to checkpoint 3.3.

smeggle

Bracciano wrote:

Usability, including access for say visually impaired users, can remain important in that goal:
But that still doesn't mean you have to code to standards.
I'm aware of W3C standards and try to follow them, but unfortunately 100% compliancy will never occur between Microsoft/Mozilla/Opera vying for market share with proprietary features, features that webdevelopers may find useful
and W3C not sanction.

The other thing is that W3C often follow what the major browsers have implemented (and that's proved popular) ie the cart leading the horse, in terms of standards implementation.

microsoft/mozilla are free and opera free unless you want rid of there ads. Point is that unless the folk who code sites follow a basic set of standards and thereby force the (idiot) browser manufactures (microjerkle) to follow a standard set of compliancy the problem will continue.

I keep referencing microsoft and seriously, there usual knocks aside, it is them at fault. Every thing W3C tries to implement and is accepted by other browser mufactires is challenged time after time by them. In the South West, where I live, mention open source or microsoft alternatives and they look at you like your some sort of hacker or summit. The stranglehold they have on the area is unbelievable and trying to get work is a nightmare. I suffer, yes, because I set myself principles and I won't lower my own exacting standards just to comply with a bunch of ignorant end users. The clients I do have consistantly return each year and I have little or no problem with there systems. My mate, who is forced to use microsoft implemented systems lives in a virtual nightmare, with daily occurrances of some problem or another. The site is down more than it's up, yet my open source systems, coded correctly to the required standards as set out by W3C just keep chugging along merrily.

In reference to other points, copying word documents to online pages even via cms. Theres plenty of php stuff out there now that can 'Aggressively' convert to xhtml with little problem.

Tables? Well, IMHO, they are the worst of a bad thing and in no way can they ever compare to div/css styling. Nesting divs inside of tables is just so wrong and totally defeats the object. Simply nest divs within divs. Far simpler and far easier to style/control.

I don't think I've used tables now in over a year and no way would I return to them. The added advantage of xhtml standards compliancy over html 4.0/4.01 is that finally you get a life. It takes me now a quarter of the time to code a templare to what it used to take. I think myself that is a better reason than any to comply to standards.

Bracciano

musician wrote:

The reality is that the more you design to standards the more compatability you will end up with between browsers. This is something alot of designers are not aware of. To comply to standards simplifies the design and is more likely to be cross browser compatable than you think.

I always tell people to read Jeffrey Zeldman's great book, Designing with Web Standards. Learn about the reality of standards before using cross browser problems as an excuse not to use them.

Good points.
Knowing and using standards simplifies design as -by very nature of being standards- they are the most likely to be cross browser friendly.

In a way there's the 'low' route and 'high' route here: not using standards cause you dont know/care about them, or -knowing about them and having maximized their use - you deviate for specific purposes.

Jeffrey Zeldman is fairly known as the A List Apart guy
http://www.alistapart.com/authors/zeldman/
and is pretty easy to correspond with too

Sidane

musician wrote:

I always tell people to read Jeffrey Zeldman's great book, Designing with Web Standards. Learn about the reality of standards before using cross browser problems as an excuse not to use them.

Was going to mention this myself, everybody involved in web design/development should read that book. After I did I was ashamed of the coding practices I had used in all my previous sites.

But having said that, considering where we've come from - a web without any standards whatsoever, the browser wars, proprietary code, poor CSS support - it's understandable that people are still using out-dated coding practices because it's what they know. Change comes slow and people in the industry have to be educated to the benefits of standards. So an active group promoting it would definitely be beneficial.

Slightly related - initial impressions of IE 7's CSS support isn't encouraging, but it is a beta so hopefully MS will get their sh*t together for the full release. If it doesn't render the Acid Test properly I for one will be very very pissed off.

ps - Musician, has Deus Ex Ed been made standards compliant yet?

mewso

Sidane wrote:

ps - Musician, has Deus Ex Ed been made standards compliant yet?

Dead as a duck. I turned my back on it when they released that shambles of a sequel. That harks back to the days of incredibly intricate 3 column table designs a la the gamespy planet sites. How many of you folks have a filler.gif on your c: drive?

rsynnott

musician wrote:

The reality is that the more you design to standards the more compatability you will end up with between browsers. This is something alot of designers are not aware of. To comply to standards simplifies the design and is more likely to be cross browser compatable than you think.

If the browsers were in fact standards-compliant, that would be the case. However, currently, only beta versions of KHTML-based browsers (Konqueror and Safari) are CSS2 compliant. Gecko-based browsers aren't great, from this point of view, and IE-based browsers are very bad (tho apparently two of the more dreadful violations have been fixed for IE7). A lot of compliant code is obviously broken-looking on IE.

It isn't fair to exclusively blame Microsoft for this; it's a relic of the browser wars more than anything else.

smeggle

use xhtml 1.0 or 1.1 and css 1.0 until xhtml 2.0/css 2.0 is fully implemented and the result is a fully working cross browser compatible website fully accessible by speech synthesis software.

This runs true to all browsers listed by W3C - microsoft, with there supposedly 'Fixed' problems is not one of them. Opera, Firefox, Safari, Amaya and the two mentioned above are and theres others whos names elude me.

The reason they work is because they comply to W3C standards and work together to ensure compatibility. Microsoft have consistently caused the problems with there refusall to comply to standards and thereby the inherant problems. As allways they want to monopolise every thing.

I use I.E. for one thing windows updates - nothing else as it is a piece of garbage. I'd say as a technical term I call it a 'System Update Program'. About the only thing it can do correctly but even thats a moot point! As to anything I don't even bother opening it. Apart from the security nightmare and the enhanced security nightmare features (SP2).

Yes the browser wars caused quite a bit of the problem and who caused most of that? microsofts refusal to follow the standards and setting there own instead, hence that stupid blooming awful Marquee (As allready mentioned) amongst other problems like the box model fiasco, all down to microsoft.

Code for the majority of comliant browsers and the site works fine but looks like what the dog drug in off the tip in I.E. vice versa, code for i.e. and it looks like the dogs just dragged more rubbish out in the compliant browsers.

microsoft really do need to sort this area out , though you just know they won't but people are catching on and mozilla/opera are really starting to make a dent in there monopoly especially Firefox, which last time I checked had hit 75million+ downloads.

because of the type of systems I run for my own personal stuff I don't really much care if an I.E. user can see it or not. Firefox/Opera/Safari users can and thats all I care about. For clients it's different obviously but otherwise I don't care.

My code is to W3C standard, my main users all use W3C compliant browsers and so don't have a problem. The problem though lies in when your doing this for a living and end up batting your head of the walls for hrs cause I.E. keeps messing up the css styling so you have to juggle values on divs so it at least looks ok across all browser levels. Or chuck in a dump load of java, which is more than likely going to be disabled/blocked and again not work.

It is because of that, peoples lively hood that this issue needs to be sorted once and for all. At the end of the day most of the widely used browsers are free, so I just cannot see the reason why they can't just all sort the rendering of the information in a standard compliant fashion.

The only alternative is, as mentioned above for web masters to take the next option, use fully compliant coding standards to the latest recommendations as set out by W3C and using it correctly and thereby 'Force' cross browser compliancy standards in this way. It's the only answer to the problem that I can see. If they can't/won't fix it then we have to by observing, following and maintaining the required set out html coding standards.

Thats what I intend to do and am doing. Have been for over a year now and the difference it made to time spent in front of a computer screen and being able to follow other interests such as my music has been enormous. Previously with html 4.0/4.01 I would be fighting with tables for hr's on end. Now I can have a ten page basic xhtml 1.0/css 1.0 site up and running in a couple of hours. (From preset templates I made of course though I can code the same from scratch in approx 5-6 hrs. Unheard of with html 4.0).

That says more to me as to why I should follow and maintain modern upto date coding standards than anything else really.

mewso

I've often wonder why the W3C don't maintain a document with the recommended rendering for all standards. Then all browsers can use this source to decide rendering, check if it has been updated and if not use the last specification. I think it could work.

mneylon

Musician - you are forgetting that vendors like to use their own tags to "improve" people's experience.

Syth

Some times tables are apropriate, like for showing tabular data.

Here's how to use tables properly to improve accessibility:
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200410/bring_on_the_tables/

mewso

blacknight wrote:

Musician - you are forgetting that vendors like to use their own tags to "improve" people's experience.

The days of layers v divs is pretty much gone. Despite the dicrepencies in browsers I think most people are beginning to recognise standards now. The w3c is recognised by all vendors so I don't see how there could be an issue with my suggestion.