Web Standards Discussion Group

FranDrastic · 26-07-2005 12:18pm #1

Hi all,

Bit of a n00b down this end of boards.....

I'm a self-employed designer-builder (hand-coder, right?) who's only recently gone w3c compliant. I'm busy too, which is good..... and means I'm learning as I go. But that's never fast enough for me. I've got a pile of bookmarks which I haven't read yet and I don't know when I will get time to.

My reason for posting is to ask this. Is there a "web standards group" out there in the Dublin area? People who are into promoting the w3c way and educating and learning from each other. I'd really like to hook up with some people once a month to get something like this going. Maybe have a couple of talks from members and a question and answer session at each.

And a few pints afterwards....

Failing that, any seminars on that anyone knows of?

*Whooo! gotta change that sig!

rsynnott · 26-07-2005 12:57pm

FranDrastic wrote:

Is there a "web standards group" out there in the Dublin area? People who are into promoting the w3c way and educating and learning from each other.

Sounds cultish.

FranDrastic · 26-07-2005 1:03pm

Robes optional

evilhomer · 27-07-2005 2:17am

As web developers we can't be away from our computers for more then five minutes at a time

so we tend not to have ever seen each other in real life

But seriously, I'm not aware of such a cult (oops, I mean Group).
If we do set one up, what color will the robes be?

dahamsta · 27-07-2005 3:57am

evilhomer wrote:

If we do set one up, what color will the robes be?

Who cares? That's the graphic designer's problem.

richardo · 27-07-2005 11:00am

Anyway, it would be a very small group. As far as I can see, web standards don't exist here!!

Most of the design companies around have non-compliant websites. And as for the so called leading sites -
Irish Internet Association
IEDR
Ireland.com
RTE
Not one of 'em compliant.

The ony major one that passes is irlgov.ie. At least they got something right.

FranDrastic · 27-07-2005 11:13am

Indeed. There is no impetus in that direction..... no pressure on these bodies to set an example

The only reason the government sites are compliant is in case my deaf friend Jim sues them because they couldn't get their tax info in time.....

Which is why I'm looking for those who are interested in making them exist. I expect a lot of the leading web design houses have builders who are compliant, but not broadcasting this except in pitches to clients etc.

There doesn't seem to be any irish focal point for this kind of thing.

richardo · 27-07-2005 11:25am

I expect a lot of the leading web design houses have builders who are compliant

But this is my point. I have looked at a load of sites for web designers, and none of them are compliant. I came across one [can't remember now which one] where they bragged about 'designing to the highest standards' but their own site failed. Either designers have never heard of W3C or they just don't care.

FranDrastic · 27-07-2005 11:29am

not bothering to learn new things = speed = invoices out the door = moolah

I know what you mean. But I'm saying they know how to do it. But dreamweaver (for example) does it badly and faster

Seth Brundle · 27-07-2005 11:44am

My current favourite is €ircon's site www.eircom.ie.
In firefox Im shown the message below...

If you pass the URL through W3C validator you get the following 724 errors! (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eircom.ie%2Fcgi-bin%2Fbvsm%2Fbveircom%2FmainPage.jsp&Check=Check)

richardo · 27-07-2005 12:15pm

LOL

But that brings me to my other bandwaggon - why do so many sites rely on client-side javascript for functionality? I'm not talking rollovers and the like. I mean that if javascript is disabled, then the site doesn't work. Example in point - superquinn4food.ie. A lot of people have JS disabled, and in some cases, corporate policy is to disable JS at the firewall, so employees can't then work the sites.

not bothering to learn new things = speed = invoices out the door = moolah

right on the nail!

Seth Brundle · 27-07-2005 12:20pm

Invalid Govt. Sites:-

Dept Of Environment
Dept Of Agriculture
Dept Of Transport
Dept Of Justice
Dept Of Arts, Sports, Tourism
Revenue
oasis.gov.ie
I couldn't be bothered with any other govt depts so tried these (all invalid):-

www.fiannafail.ie
www.finegael.ie (which inciodentally has very little on it!)
www.labour.ie
www.sinnfein.ie
www.progressivedemocrats.ie

the Dept Of Health & kiddies actually validates with XHTML 1.0 strict!!!

richardo · 27-07-2005 12:28pm

Hold on there Kbannon. If you are going to list all invalid sites you might as well just Google "website ireland".

List the valid ones - it'll only take half a page.

pwd · 27-07-2005 12:36pm

I'm interested in web standards. iqcontent sometimes orgainse seminars about that sort of stuff. I have not been to any of them.

Seth Brundle · 27-07-2005 12:36pm

True but my point started out to find govt sites that were invalid as the govt should (in theory) be setting good standards for us all.

(just re-read my text - as this govt has no standards, I shouldn't have expected much!)

richardo · 27-07-2005 12:46pm

But surely the front leader in setting standards should be the IIA.

From their site....

The Irish Internet Association (IIA) is the professional body for those conducting business via the Internet from Ireland. It has been and remains one of the driving forces behind the adoption of the medium.

Yet their site fails. What does that say about standards in Ireland??

mneylon · 27-07-2005 12:47pm

richardo wrote:

But surely the front leader in setting standards should be the IIA.

From their site....

Yet their site fails. What does that say about standards in Ireland??

I would think it says more about the company that developed the site than the IIA themselves.

mneylon · 27-07-2005 12:49pm

richardo wrote:

But this is my point. I have looked at a load of sites for web designers, and none of them are compliant. I came across one [can't remember now which one] where they bragged about 'designing to the highest standards' but their own site failed. Either designers have never heard of W3C or they just don't care.

A lot of them don't seem to care or else think that compliancy is this really complicated and awkward "addon" that they can use to bill their clients silly amounts of money for.

Seth Brundle · 27-07-2005 12:52pm

blacknight wrote:

I would think it says more about the company that developed the site than the IIA themselves.

Agreed. The designers own site also fails the daz challenge (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.aro.ie/).
However, given the resources and abilities the IIA claim to have, surely someone there noticed the errors

Seth Brundle · 27-07-2005 12:54pm

blacknight wrote:

A lot of them don't seem to care or else think that compliancy is this really complicated and awkward "addon" that they can use to bill their clients silly amounts of money for.

But complaincy should not be a bonus. When you offer a price do you offer quotes like:-
offer1: - design of site
offer2:- design of site using correct coding

edit - not you personally!!!

mneylon · 27-07-2005 1:04pm

kbannon wrote:

However, given the resources and abilities the IIA claim to have, surely someone there noticed the errors

I think you are confusing what the IIA is. Ring them. Talk to them. They'll explain

kbannon wrote:

edit - not you personally!!!

I'm not a designer, so why would I take that personally?

richardo · 27-07-2005 1:05pm

But complaincy should not be a bonus. When you offer a price do you offer quotes like:-
offer1: - design of site
offer2:- design of site using correct coding

There should be no difference. There is not much involved in making a site compliant. If you code correctly to start with then where is the problem?

Non-compliance occurs because a) coders don't know their HTML or b) are too lazy to check such things as ALT tags, or tag nesting errors.

Seth Brundle · 27-07-2005 1:16pm

blacknight wrote:

I think you are confusing what the IIA is. Ring them. Talk to them. They'll explain

I know what they are/do.
However, if you read their goals it says this...

The Goals of the Irish Internet Association
To achieve this vision, the Irish Internet Association has identified the following 10 goals of achievement. These goals are to be achieved by 2005.

1. ACCESS: Every individual and business will have access to the communications infrastructure they require at a reasonable price. At least 75% of individuals and businesses will have a choice of communications provider.
2. CONTENT: Every citizen will have access to Irish originated content, and the individual means to control the quality of online content accessed by their family.
3. E-BUSINESS Every business, regardless of size, will be able to build secure trading relationships with every other business online
4. EDUCATION: No child shall leave the educational system without good PC skills and an advanced knowledge of the application of all things digital.
5. E-GOVERNMENT: Every individual and business will be able to conduct the vast majority of their interactions with the state online in a manner, which optimises transaction security, and the privacy of the individual.
6. EXCELLENCE: Irish software and technology will be recognised as world leaders, supported by national and regional digital centres of excellence.
7. FINANCIAL SERVICES: All financial institutions will facilitate the expansion of business online allowing all customers to use digital methods to conduct all transactions and communications with their financial institution by 2005.
8. INFRASTRUCTURE: Ireland will strive to have the best bandwidth (Mbps) capacity per capita in Europe. Every town of 10,000 people will be connected to at least one telecommunications backbone. Every town of 25,000 people will connect to at least two backbones.
9. KNOWLEDGE AND INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL: Government, industry and academia will work actively together to create sustainable national advantage through the creation of commercialised intellectual capital, and a culture of lifelong learning
10. SOCIAL INCLUSION: No one shall be excluded from relevant access to technology based on location, language, education, disability, income level, employment status, or age.

As I said, they have enough resources within to enable the production of a valid (X)HTML site

mneylon · 27-07-2005 2:40pm

Kbannon - Do not confuse the organisations goals with the organisations officers etc.,
They are not web developers and harping on about their charter is not going to change that. In fact even discussing it here is not going to change anything.

richardo · 27-07-2005 3:01pm

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.

pwd · 27-07-2005 5:09pm

I read up a good bit about accessible and standards-compliant design. My site (which I have been reliably informed is dire form a design point of view) does nonetheless conform to these standards. I also was developing a graphical alt tag editor, although that's been on hold for a while). Anyways I might be able to answer questions if you have any or point you toward some decent resources.
Suckerfish dropdown menus are the only decent accessible drop down menus that I could find. There are a lot of excellent css techniques outlined on that site by the same people too.

kstanl · 27-07-2005 8:48pm

FranDrastic wrote:

Indeed. There is no impetus in that direction..... no pressure on these bodies to set an example

A new group that is being established is hoping to look after that. Their site's going live in September - http://www.wddgi.com

Obviously Web standards and accessibility will be high on the agenda but I don't think there will be any immediate militancy on the issue. The softly, softly lead-by-the-hand and educate approach works best I reckon!

smeggle · 28-07-2005 4:47am

This has been one of my arguments for a year or so now. Nearly 90+% of web sites are technically illegal due to what I personally term 'Get By Coding'.

Last year a disabled user succesfully sued a regularly used website because his use of the site was severely restricted by bad coding or incorrect coding. Under International and National disability laws concerning media and the availability to the disabled. All of those sites are technically 'Illegal' due to this!

The thing is most web designers in Ireland (and Internationally) still use the antiquated (and fecking horrible nightmare)html 4.0/4.01 and most very poorly indeed. 99% do not even know how to even identify there document correctly or how to costruct the head correctly. Allready any speech synthesis software is in trouble and it hasn't even got to the content area of the page!

Again, mostly to blame for this is microsoft and there bloody monopilising attitudes hence the reason for the box model problem that still abounds because ms in there infinate glory refuse stead fastly to follow a basic set of guidelines set out by W3C. This btw way headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented html basically or web browsing.

That aside why use an 8-9 year old out dated coding standard? xhtml/css is far easier to learn IMHO and far easier to implement across systems and thats without the more advanced control it gives you over page content.

Returning to my original point on legality and accessibility though, if you code xhtml/css wrong and it is not compliant, your site/web-system will still be inaccessible to the disabled and therefore technically illegal.

As I said, this mostly occurs by the incorrect document identification (the dtd) and just as important, incorrect header construction. I code strictly within W3C current standards of xhtml1.0/1.1/and css1.0/2.0. Currently I am upgrading my standards to xhtml 2.0 (Forms controlled 'Off Browser' - ? YIPPEEE! At last!) to maintain compliancy.

Mostly this occurs because most 'Wannabe' web designers don't even have a clue as to how a browser 'Reads' a web page and are only interested (As stated above) In getting summit up and the 'moolah' in. (No offence intended there btw) but it is a true factor. The other problem is these stupid 'wysiwyg' editors. Due to these incompetant pieces of junk, we have just about anyone calling themselves web system designers. Stick them in front of notepad and tell them to write even the basic start of an html document and they'd look at you gaga.

I may be being obtuse there and rightfully so IMHO. Some really good sites are ruined because of these people and the sooner a regulated body along with 'Qualifications' needed like any other job is put in place the better.

I'm probably going to get a load of derision for all of that and so be it. But in defence, I spent hours reading over the W3C guidelines and 99.9% of my work validates to the current standard of xhtml 1.0/css 1.0 or xhtml 1.1/css1.0 (css 2.0 is strictly for xhtml 2.0 really).
I see no reason why a job should be half done. If you are going to do a job then do it properly is my motto. I mean seriously, what would you say if you took your car to the garage for the brakes to be changed or the tyres and paid for a 2hundred quid job but only got a 50quid job? Yeah - you'd be up in arms about it straight of. Same principle applys here IMHO..

Sorry this is one of my pet rants - I cannot abide lazy half done half learnt jobs. What people get away with charging people for and the results that most get is deplorable. Any other service doing it would find themselves in court! Case in question is a site I am currently redeveloping to the correct standards. The old site was using a modifide dreamweaver 6.0 template (Which with a very quick simple repair job is actually xhtml though is identified as html 4.01). It was utilised very poorly to boot and inoperative at 800x600 resolution. Most sites constructed today are notorious for resolution problems hence the use of the stupid java script as a remedy when all you need do is write your css correctly and use percentages instead of fixed pixel alignment.

I have found only a handful of web designers in Ireland who take the time and care to ensure that they deliver an up to standard, fully accessible product to there clients. Finishing with that, it really is a disgusting situation and one that does need to be remedied as soon as possible!

My last comment is more a question. What are you html 4.0/4.01 'Get By Coders' going to do when html 4.0/4.01 becomes so depreceated that browsers will have been configured to ignore it? It's allready happening as browsers and code advances and old depreceated code is used less and less the ability of the browser to render it has been excluded/switched of?

I'm gonna love all that extra work in the next few years - can't wait

edit: just looked at that link kstanl you supplied. Whilst it is valid 'Get by' xhtml (Transitional xhtml) the header is a complete mess. keywords, description and css link are in the wrong place. meta tag order is totally dis ordered. heh Great start - And they are what? Going to promote correct coding standards? Thinks they need to go back to Web School

edit 2: WTF! What the hell is

br clear="all" / (brackets excluded <>)

Where'd they get that crap from? Some bloody coding standards there gonna set allright - not impressed!

mewso · 28-07-2005 11:58am

I think as a web developer for Local Government I'd like to address some of the issues from my point of view. I am very pro web standards, have been for the last 2 years. The fact remains though that the people who call the shots don't care. I don't think it's correct to call developers lazy and unwilling to conform to standards when their hands are most probably tied in most situations. What is needed in this country is some serious education for non web-savvy people. Big organisations like the Council I work for inevitably use a CMS for example so people who know nothing about web design and development are controlling the content on these sites. They need to be educated. 9 times out of 10 a CMS user will just want to paste a word document, which in my experience does not produce proper xhtml code, into the CMS and you have certain options on how to deal with this.

1. The CMS converts the word pasted html to proper xhtml. Alot of CMS' claim to be xhtml complaint but in most cases its probably with the caveat that the users obey certain rules, not pasting from Word being one.
2. The user learns to use the authoring facilities within the CMS typically an enhanced iframe. A reasonable option except people have been using word for far too long.
3. Educate your users, instruct them to author for the web first and other media second. Provide them with an xhtml wysiwyg word-alike html editor and tell them they need to use that instead of word. My preference but the world and his mother 'aint gonna listen to me.

When a site I have laboured over becomes a sad image of what it once was because I am putting up the 15th image on our front page because yet another member of senior staff wants his area given special coverage on the main page along with the 14 other areas that wanted to be given special coverage eventually you start to not care. I have been deveoping web sites for 7 years and where I work nobody asks for my opinion they just tell me what they want. It's a minor miracle that I have managed to convince most people in my workplace that marquees should not be used. This is the developers day to day plight so you might understand a little but better why xhtml and accessability have not been addressed. Because men in suits have not been made to see it's importance and they are not going to listen to me.

Seth Brundle · 28-07-2005 12:33pm

Good points musician and I'll assume my following points don't apply to you!

However, even if Bertie Ahern walks up to a Govt. Dept webmaster and insists on his photo being in the middle of each of the sites pages, shouldnt it still be possible to make it complaint. Currently many of the Govt sites errors I listed earlier in this thread contain careless mistakes (e.g. no alt text). Having a w**ker for a boss/supervisor doesn't excuse that.

If a word doc is being copied into a template, then surely its easy enough to save it as a web page and tidy up its HTML. Alternatively save it as PDF and allow users to download that.

mewso · 28-07-2005 1:17pm

Well your CMS has to cater for all that you want. As for pdf I think they are far too widely used and primarily aimed at printing. If a user has a 5 line document I think it's a serious mistake to convert it to pdf. The problem is that without any discussion alot of users were given the ability to upload word documents and other content without any consideration to what we would end up with. I could make our front page compliant tomorrow but it's the substantial content within the site that is the problem and theres a hell of a lot of it and I'm not going to hide behind just having one page compliant.
In fairness accessability is an issue now that they are being forced to become aware of. Their only problem is the lagacy of existing content I mentioned above. I personally will always use alt tags in images and title tags in links etc. but you're missing the point. With a CMS in place the developer has no control over a substantial amount of content because things like compliant and accessible code were not discussed 5 years ago.

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