Web Standards save time and money
Web standards are a new approach to web coding (new enough that many web design companies have not switched to it yet). They allow designers to write a single set of code that works for all modern browsers. This approach works faster on the Internet and saves both time and money that would have been spent on programming, maintenance, and usage.
In 1998, web designers started a discussion with browser designers that led to the development of the Web Standards Project. Its purpose was to create a technology that made it possible to stop writing browser-specific code. In those days there was no choice but to write separate code for Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers on which websites would appear. These websites require a larger amount of code and take a longer time to program, update, and change. The old-style websites load more slowly, too--each time one is opened, a customer's computer has to process all that code.
The advantages of having web-standard compliant websites are:
- they load more quickly on user devices (web-standard compliant websites are smaller, in terms of file size and require less bandwidth than sites programmed in the old way)
- they have lowered costs for maintenance, updates, and changes
- high levels of usage will have less impact on the way sites function and on costs (files use less space on the server)
- they will be ranked higher by search engines
- they will look good on future browsers as well as modern browsers (THT Design's Lubliner Florist site, for example, is programmed using web standards, meaning that with just one set of code, it looks great on whatever modern browser you're using)
- as more websites are converted to web standards, the Internet as a whole will function more efficiently
For more information about the Web Standards Committee and its goals, see The Web Standards Project (http://webstandards.org/about/mission/).