In the early stages of the Internet’s development, anyone who considered him or herself a Webmaster could just jumble together a bunch of code, pictures and text and call the ensuing product a web design. Web standards as we know it today have not yet been firmly established in the days of the infancy of the Internet.

However, technological developments and the growing sophistication of users browsing the Internet have given rise to the necessity of implementing web standards when it comes to web design. It is not enough to bundle code, graphics and text anymore and call the results a proper website.

Why do web standards need to be followed when coming up with a creative web design? Basically, web standards are meant to protect the website and to ensure its continued accessibility to its users. The reasons in detail are listed below.

1. ­Following web standards reduces uses of resources. A creative web design that strictly follows web standards are smaller in size, does not eat up too much memory and does not take up too much bandwidth.
2. Websites created using web standards are ensured of future accessibility. If a website was built in a design that observes the set web standards, its owner will be assured that the content of his or her website will remain accessible and readable in the years or decades to come.
3. Maintaining websites that have followed web standards is easier. Before, it took hours to maintain a website and make sure it was running properly. Now, however, it only takes as little as five minutes to keep a website in running order as long as it is designed according to the set web standards.
4. It is easier to expand a website designed in accordance to web standards. A website that was built with a creative web design that follows web standards would have the right information architecture that can be easily expanded with new content.
5. Websites following web standards are easier to navigate. The last thing that a visitor wants to happen while visiting a website is to get lost within its pages. If that visitor is unable to find what he or she is looking for in a website, he or she will not hesitate to click away from the site.

There are many tools and software available that can help web developers make sure that their web design complies with web standards. Complying with web standards, however, can be as easy as making sure that the three factors below are observed in the web design:

1. The correct DOCTYPE is specified on top of the page. This ensures that the web browser will correctly read the webpage.
2. The syntax used in the HTML code is clean and valid so there would be no ambiguities or errors in loading and displaying the webpage.
3. The elements for the website’s presentation and the elements indicating its content should be kept separate using CSS.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 5:41 am and is filed under Resources & Articles.