Web Design Nirvana Without the Web Standards
November 28, 2006
The Web standards zealots have been running rampant on the Web, spewing their tripe of how you must follow the Web standards no matter what is happening in the real world.
… Why pay attention how (the most popular) web browsers read and understand code? To hell with them, so says the Web standards zealots.
No, instead of pulling our heads out of the sand, we should follow the W3C wish list of how code should be rendered, and use a bunch of fragile hacks to make our pie-in-the-sky code work.
DON’T BE FOOLED
As you read this, you may be asking yourself why would anyone ignore reality? If it’s raining, it makes sense to use an umbrella – even if the weather man says it ain’t raining!
Well, I would have to agree with you. After I read the weather reports, I look outside…
Unfortunately, many in the web design community haven’t. They blindly follow the teachings of the web standard zealots, despite the facts their websites are hacked up, require more work than necessary, and add no real value or advantage to the web site.
WEB STANDARDS MYTH DEBUNKED
I will not go into the details here, I’ve covered that elsewhere. But consider these myths:
- By following the Web standards you will save money on bandwidth: yes, bandwidth is expensive (sarcasm) and saving a few kilobytes is going to make a difference … ya right!
- By following the Web standards your code will be forward compatible: except for your hacks where many have broke in IE 7 – I hate to say it, but I told you so!
Clean code (regardless if it is Web standards compliant or not) makes for easier to maintain pages. Most (99.999%) of us are building average websites where bandwidth limitations are not even being approached – hosting is dirt cheap and getting cheaper all the time!
In the days of high-speed Internet, video (Youtube) and mp3, to quibble about 5k savings on a web page is a classic example of the old expression ‘penny wise and pound foolish’.
XHTML FOOLISHNESS
Along with Web standards foolishness comes XHTML foolishness. First a little background:
Nerds, being what they are, love to get the ‘latest and the greatest’ – makes them feel special. So it is only natural that they gravitate to XHTML – the new and better HTML. Yes nerds, I know XHTML is XML.
The point is that XHTML is not ready for prime-time … if you know what I mean. It has two major flaws today:
- IE6 and IE7 will not render XHTML properly, so all the supposed advantages are totally lost!
- XHTML makes working with the DOM (and thus AJAX) a real pain. Since AJAX is the future of web application development it would seem silly to me to hinder DOM scripting in any way.
I mention XHTML because many Web standards zealots are enamored with XHTML, and so the pattern of continued denial of reality goes on. Tisk, tisk tisk.
WEB DESIGN NIRVANA
I hate it when people bellyache but don’t offer a solution, so here it is:
- Use the latest HTML and just be sure to close your tags and that the code is properly formed. This makes the pages easier to maintain and makes DOM scripting work easier.
- Don’t use hacks! Use IE conditional comments to deal with browser issues like IE6’s problems with CSS positioning etc.
The real world Web standards are found in the browsers being used, not what the W3C would like them to be.
Best,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
