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Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Monday, September 01, 2008
Q&A - 1 - "Standards Compliance"
Welcome to the first of many Questions and Answers blogs from PurePages. We get many questions from our clients and from the general public. So we thought this an apt way of answering these queries, whilst making them accessible to everyone else.
So our first question is: "As a non-techy what does it mean to say that a site is standards compliant? And how will this affect my website?" - from So Sumi
Well firstly let me say in my eyes there are two sets of standards in web design and development. There are rules of best practice [generally accepted by the web community] and also the standards of W3C (for the mark-up languages), the other is the environment standards (this is how the site behaves in a browser), this can include anything from font, to colours and beyond.
We say a site is standards compliant (at least at PurePages) when the site not only validates in W3C and bobby but also when it has had usability testing completed and appropriate changes made (the project cycle). This means that each site we release is not only valid (when coded in-house) but is also accessible to the audience, regardless of who they are and what disabilities they may or may not have. Also for PurePages standards include looks and layouts, ensuring that as well as functionality we supply top quality websites.
So what effect does it have on your site then? Well to be clear, standards make your site accessible to everyone, regardless of the fact they may or may not have a disability. But more than this they make your site continuous between browsers, keeping your brand intact.
However you have to be careful, certain browsers are not fully standards compliance and developers are having to pull dirty tricks to make the site look compliant in them. By certain browsers I mean Internet Explorer 7 and below, although 7 has helped a little. (A review of the Beta for IE8 will be online soon). On the other hand Firefox and Safari are much more standards compliant, though nowhere near perfect.
One last note. Although standards can maintain your brand and design it is important to remember that a little variance in design between browsers can make people remember your site a little more because it has appeared to change slightly even if it hasn’t.
So our first question is: "As a non-techy what does it mean to say that a site is standards compliant? And how will this affect my website?" - from So Sumi
Well firstly let me say in my eyes there are two sets of standards in web design and development. There are rules of best practice [generally accepted by the web community] and also the standards of W3C (for the mark-up languages), the other is the environment standards (this is how the site behaves in a browser), this can include anything from font, to colours and beyond.
We say a site is standards compliant (at least at PurePages) when the site not only validates in W3C and bobby but also when it has had usability testing completed and appropriate changes made (the project cycle). This means that each site we release is not only valid (when coded in-house) but is also accessible to the audience, regardless of who they are and what disabilities they may or may not have. Also for PurePages standards include looks and layouts, ensuring that as well as functionality we supply top quality websites.
So what effect does it have on your site then? Well to be clear, standards make your site accessible to everyone, regardless of the fact they may or may not have a disability. But more than this they make your site continuous between browsers, keeping your brand intact.
However you have to be careful, certain browsers are not fully standards compliance and developers are having to pull dirty tricks to make the site look compliant in them. By certain browsers I mean Internet Explorer 7 and below, although 7 has helped a little. (A review of the Beta for IE8 will be online soon). On the other hand Firefox and Safari are much more standards compliant, though nowhere near perfect.
One last note. Although standards can maintain your brand and design it is important to remember that a little variance in design between browsers can make people remember your site a little more because it has appeared to change slightly even if it hasn’t.
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