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Supporting Web Standards

I just returned from the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, where I was lucky enough to attend two panels sponsored by the Web Standards Project (WaSP).

WaSP has an important mission: "To fight for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the web."

As you probably know, web standards are developed by standards bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that provide a set of rules and guidelines for key web technologies. Most often, web designers and developers pay attention to standards specific to HTML, XHTML, XML, and CSS.

In theory, if you followed the W3C guidelines for how to implement these standards in your web pages, those pages would render the same regardless of how your users view your website.

However, in reality it's not just about how you code your page. Because browser support for these standards varies, users may experience your web pages differently depending on which browser they're using. User experiences may also depend on the software you're using to code those pages.

Why WaSP?

The varying levels of support and adoption for web standards by browser manufacturers, HTML tools, and web designers and developers led to the creation of WaSP in 1998.

For the past eight years, WaSP has worked with web authoring tool makers like Adobe, browser manufacturers like Microsoft, and web designers and developers to support the adoption of standards for the web. WaSP has a group of task forces focusing on web standards in specific areas:

• Accessibility Task Force works with web developers and designers to promote an understanding of the importance of web accessibility, and with product developers to support accessibility within their products
• Dreamweaver Task Force works with Adobe to improve the standards compliance and accessibility of web pages produced with Macromedia Dreamweaver
• Education Task Force works with higher education institutions to encourage the creation of standards-based websites by those institutions and to ensure that web standards are taught in classes and programs (computer science, design, information technology) that those institutions offer
• Microsoft Task Force seeks to increase support for web standards in Microsoft products such as the Internet Explorer web browser and Visual Studio and ASP.NET developer tools
• DOM Scripting Task Force aims to educate developers about the Document Object Model (DOM), especially around client-side JavaScript

During the past eight years, WaSP has made great strides getting browser manufactures to support web standards, including HTML 4, XHTML 1.0, CSS Level 1, ECMAScript (the standard version of JavaScript), and the DOM.

Implementing Web Standards

Considering the success of the Web Standards Project, it is now time for all designers and developers to implement standards fully such as HTML, XHTML, XML, and CSS when building websites. Building pages with these standards will ensure that sites are accessible to those with disabilities, display properly in the next version of web browsers like Internet Explorer 7.0, and are easier to develop and maintain.

We know it can be hard to break old habits and start building websites following web standards. To help you make the transition, the Developer Center will be highlighting how to implement the best practices of certain web standards in the coming months, starting with CSS. Visit our new resource page to learn about the best practices of CSS with Dreamweaver.

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