Standards! We Don't Need No Stinking Standards!

Imagine this: You go in for a routine check-up. The doctor gives you some bad news and tells you need surgery. "What!", you scream. But nonetheless, you know you need it, so you oblige. The day has come for surgery. You go in to meet the surgeon and the the surgeon says to you this: "We normally use a scalpel for this procedure with anesthesia, but for you, we are going to use a butter knife, some twine, and aspirin instead of the good stuff. Oh and by the way, you have to be discharged today. But hey! You'll make it. You've gone through tougher times than this!" Unfortunately, this is what has happened to the web and the way it's being designed on a daily basis. Remember the days of Flash? Seems like so long ago, but 2001 was a huge year for Flash. Everyone wanted it. So instead of fixing the Versioning debacle or educating our clients on why they can't design their website for just one browser, we switched to Flash. I love Flash and it has it's place (in many places), but instead of fixing the problem we just put a nice cover over it. Flash isn't the problem though. And it shouldn't be solely blamed. It's overuse was just one of many factors that have contributed to the nastiness of the web we now know. I truly believe Web 2.0 opened the wound that has always been there. It showed us in the web community that not only have we accepted bad schools of thought when it comes to design and development, but it also showed us that we need to further educate our clients on why best practices are necessary. Now I'm not here to delve into the foray of what best practices are and how we apply them. You can go to WaSP to discover all it's fine glory. What I'm saying is this: We have to pay attention to web standards as a general development and design process. If we break at the increasing demands of client profitability and deadlines or the latest web fad, we'll be placing another big band aid over a wound that will never stop bleeding. Besides, best practices actually save server and visitor bandwidth. You save bandwidth, you save money. Simple economics. But that's just one example. What we do is detailed, complex and very fun. I encourage every web development house to go back to what's already been there from the beginning, Standards and Best Practices. It's a vital component to our business structure and it's a critical component to how the web moves and engages its communities. If you want a more in-depth understanding of what it means to design with web standards, then pick up this handy-dandy book: Designing with Web Standards