Following the Rules

The Importance of W3C-Compliant Content

 

What is Compliance?

The W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) is an international organization dedicated to establishing detailed standards governing the construction of Internet content. It is directed by none other than the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Burners-Lee. The organization has been in operation for eleven years, and has successfully shaped the World Wide Web to be what it is today. Content which is “compliant” with a certain W3C-issued standard (“recommendation”) must follow all of the requirements and regulations of that recommendation. If there were no set protocols and standards for web content to follow, reliable and system-independent web pages would not be possible.

Creating W3C-compliant code is generally not a laborious task. The W3C, and third party sources, openly publish a large amount of documentation for all recommendations. Also, there are often different levels of compliance that may be selected: web programmers may follow a “strict” recommendation, or a less demanding “transitional” recommendation. This process of creating compliant content is critical to the success of any website, for several reasons.

 

Consistency

A very important concept in marketing and publicity is message consistency. Web programmers want their content to look the same and act the same for all potential web customers, not just certain customers with certain computer hardware and software. One of the best ways to guarantee this is to write W3C-compliant code.

Consider, for example, a certain web page that has been written and tested for the Internet Explorer browser only, without paying heed to any W3C recommendations. Specific aspects of this content will run in one way on Internet Explorer, and run a very different way on alternative browsers, such as  Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Netscape Navigator. This is a significant problem, whose solution lies in W3C compliance.

 

Smooth Operation and Professionalism

As the complexity of Internet programming code increases, the risk of introducing portability errors also increases. In many cases, non-compliant content written for one browser will simply not operate on a different browser (the content is said to be “not portable”). To ensure website professionalism, it is very important that content be compliant so that these portability errors are avoided.

An added mark of professionalism can be added to a website if it is W3C-compliant: a graphical link can be added which sports the W3C logo (see figure i). The text on the graphic refers to the content's relevant recommendation. Customers who follow this link will be brought to a W3C website which automatically verifies the website's compliance. 

 

 

 Figure i. The W3C logo / compliance-checking link.


 

Better Programming Practices

Those familiar with programming any solution - whether it be for the Internet or otherwise - constantly recognize the importance of structured, organized code. Such code is far easier to understand for the developer during debugging or adding enhanced functionality. Also, if the code changes hands between many different developers, organized and structured code can avoid massive headaches when attempting to reinterpret someone else's work.

W3C compliance greatly helps to enforce programming practices leading to structured, well laid out, logical web code. If all programmers working on a certain website project are all following the same standardized W3C recommendation, it saves time and decreases the chance for errors.

 

New, Powerful Options and Effects

Implementing your website in compliance with new, advanced W3C recommendations opens the door to effects and graphical elements not otherwise possible. For example, variable transparency and automatic content “skinning” with cascading stylesheets can make a website stand out from the rest. Cascading stylesheets and XHTML also have the added advantage of high extensibility. Code written to follow such recommendations becomes, by its nature, modular and highly adaptable to change. As a result, a wide variety of modifications can be made to a website, either in the design phase or in real-time, with far less time and money spent.

 

Checking Compliance

An indispensable tool to use when coding W3C-compliant content is the Validator, available at http://validator.w3.org/. It is an online utility which automatically analyses a website in painstaking detail to see whether or not the website is W3C-compliant. If not, the Validator displays a list of the different compliance errors and warnings. It can be used to analyse code that has already been published on a website on the Internet, as well as code uploaded from a local computer.

 

Caveats

Of course, caution should be taken with any powerful technology. Some of the more advanced W3C recommendations can be difficult to follow for the inexperienced web programmer, so it is always a good idea to choose the recommendation based on skill level of the programming staff. Also, it is important to note that not all web browsers follow the W3C's standards. Even if a web programmer produces a flawlessly compliant website, that website may not appear as desired on all browsers if some browsers do not support compliance to certain aspects of the web content. The way to avoid such problems is to thoroughly test all content on multiple browsers and platforms (which should be done anyway.) Thankfully, newer recommendations such as XHTML recover very well from gaps in  browser support.

 

A New Language

Needless to say, the Internet is growing every day with exponentially increasing amounts of content, and customers and corporations are increasingly relying on its power of open expression. With this increasing size and reliance comes an increasing necessity for the language of the Internet to be properly formatted and optimally accessible to all audiences around the world.

 

To read more about the World Wide Web Consortium, its history and its recommendations, visit www.w3.org.

 

 

 

The author, Greg Toombs, is co-owner of Useful Computer Solutions, a company
that renovates websites. He is an award-winning computer programmer, and a
Electronics Engineering Technologist graduate from Canada's prestigious RCC
Institute of Technology. He is a school governor of RCC Institute of Technology.
He can be reached at greg.toombs@bluebottle.com

 

 

 

 

 





 

 

 

 

 

 

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