Archive for October 2009
Standards as referred to in this article refer to Web and Technical Standards related to the World Wide Web.
Standards—what are they? Why do they matter? Aren’t they just cryptic rules formulated by “The Man” to stifle creativity and innovation?
Standards are defined as
- something considered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison; an approved model
- an object that is regarded as the usual or most common size or form of its kind
- a rule or principle that is used as a basis for judgment
- an average or normal requirement, quality, quantity, level, grade, etc.
Let’s look at an example of how standards are used in the theoretical building of a house. Imagine that you are building a house in California. The architect is in Maine and the contractor is from Florida. You have no problem relying on the contractor to produce what was in the blueprints because the measurements used by the architect in Maine are the same ones that the contractor grew up using in Florida. They are also the same measurements that you are used to in California. In other words—an inch is an inch.
The same thing applies to developing a website. Imagine that the blueprints (the HTML and CSS) that comprise your site are built by each and every contractor (the browser) that loads them. On the web there are 5 main contractors (browsers). Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, & Opera. Each browser has a different rendering engine which causes them to make the website look slightly different. The fact that the different browsers even render the page closely the same speaks to the power of web standards when they are implemented. Each browser serves a totally different target market. Yet each browser is able to build your website relatively the same. Thanks to web standards. 
Already we have witnessed 2 major roadblocks that have set back technical innovation. Both of these are directly related to standards.
The first example is the Mac/Windows wars of the 80’s & 90’s. Think back to the time when you had to ask what platform someone was on in order to work for them. Because there were 2 sets of standards it was much more difficult than today to work with someone who was using an alternate standard. This problem has largely been alleviated thanks to the proliferation of good web based applications. This brings me to my second and in my opinion far worse example of a major innovation roadblock—The browser wars of the 1990’s.
The 1990’s witnessed the birth of the world wide web—the planets first truly global communication platform. A few visionaries saw the potential of the web and created the first web browsers. Netscape Navigator was created by Marc Andreessen and a team and quickly became the dominant player in the web browsing space. Microsoft, who had a 95%+ desktop market share, wasn’t content to let Netscape dominate this new area and quickly released Internet Explorer. In a competition to out-do each other both browsers started adding proprietary HTML tags leading web developers of the time to have to code 2 versions of a site—one for Internet Explorer and one for Netscape. Microsoft also bundled Internet Explorer with Windows and gave it away for free. Netscape couldn’t compete and quickly disappeared. This allowed Microsoft to grab a 90%+ share of the browsing market. While they had this market share they proceeded to stifle and constrain the budding Internet.
The Internet languished in the grasp of Internet Explorer until the creation of Firefox. This was a free browser that was relatively secure and followed the W3C standards. Open source enthusiasts and early adopters flocked to Firefox. Internet Explorers strangle hold on the Internet slowly started to loosen and it’s market share slipped and continues to slip. Galvanized by Firefox’s success, other companies have also released quality browsers.
Today there are 5 major browsers:
All of the browsers follow the W3C specifications pretty closely except Internet Explorer. It is infamous for having strange and problematic quirks that require hacks by web developers. Please have mercy on the web development community and use a modern and web standards compliant browser. They are free, take about a minute to download, and are way more secure than Internet Explorer.Internet Explorer has many issues. You can read more about them at
Also, there are many features of HTML5 which Internet Explorer does not support. Google has recently created an amazing workaround for this. There is now an Internet Explorer extension that turns IE into Google Chrome! Yes its true. It’s called Google Chrome Frame. Once installed the browser will load any page that has
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">in the head section of the HTML. If a page doesn’t have that meta tag then the person can type cf:http://www.thesite.com and Internet Explorer will render the page as if it were Chrome.
The web has become inextricably linked with our society. It has spread into every facet of our day to day lives. Our access to this amazing creation is the web browser. The closer that all browsers follow and the closer that all web developers code to standards, the more uniform the experience no matter what platform.
The standard setting body is The World Wide Web Consortium. It consist of companies and individuals that share a passion for technical and web standards. I am a member of the World Wide Web Consortium.
The standards that I follow are
I am also involved in the creation of HTML5.No tags
My name is Carlos Cardona and this is Cardona Designs—a Digital Media and Web Design firm based out of Santa Cruz California. I practice Standards Compliant HTML & CSS and believe that standards lead to better experiences across multiple platforms and foster technical innovation. I am a member in good standing of the W3C HTML-WG working daily on the HTML5 Spec. My passion for the web is driven by my belief that technology can uplift the human condition and free us for more fitting tasks than we currently generally strive. The web in my opinion is the first application with the potential to unite humanity and give an equal voice to everyone as well as leading to ubiquity of information.
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