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.

More on Colours

For a lot of designers colours are one of the most important ways (after content layout) of conveying a message to an audience. So with this in mind it is easy to see why so many designers spend so much time dithering and experimenting with colour schemes.

Over the past few months here at PurePages, we have spent numerous hours playing around with colours, colour scheme software and visited many websites to find the colour scheme we liked for a clients website (some of these have been mentioned in our last blog).

So here's a quick look at what we have found most useful.

Websites
-colourlovers.com- My personal fravourite of the bunch. This site has thousands of colour schemes/palettes along with hundreds of patterns (for use as backgrounds or as you wish). This really is a top notch site.
-Adobe KULER- A Fantastic little gadget and certainly one to take a look at if you have a few minutes on your hands. KULER although flash based is slick and easy to use (though i doubt it does much for seo), it has a nice collection even if a little limiting.
-websitetips.com- Once you've played around with this you will find this a nice little tool to add to your arsenal of colour scheming tools.
-Dulux.co.uk- This may seem a little odd, but Dulux on their website show colours that go together (imagine it as a static version of their tv adverts). So in theory its as simple as letting them do all the work so you don't have to... as long as the client likes those colours that is.

Software
-Colour Schemer- As well as the online version this site also allows you to download a much handier tool (working out at around £25). This tool is far more advanced than what you see on the internet. However I would urge caution in it's use as I believe its likely to be a combination of this software and a website from above that gives the best result.

[EDIT: AK - KULER ADDED]