Building Modern Websites - Meeting Web Standards
Modern Website Designers are using Web Standards to make sites usable
Do you want your pages to load faster?
Look good in all browsers?
Get ranked well with the search engines?
Be accessible to all people?
The Truth is most Websites are Designed so Poorly they just don't work?
Many designers continue to over bloat their Web pages with outdated depreciated code, excessive JavaScript, over use of graphics and poorly structured layouts all at the cost of slow loading pages and inaccessible content. It doesn’t have to be this way, CSS can take the place of old-school HTML table layout tricks, interactive elements that rely on code bloating JavaScript (not to mention the inaccessible side of the story) and excessive attribute tags. In all cases, it replaces nonstandard coding practices, meaningless mark-up and bandwidth-wasting, outdated junk.
So why are sites still being poorly designed? Before we can answer this question we need to understand what makes old design practices out of date and why we used them in the first place. Then we can address how today's technology changes old-school ways, in particular how the internet, Websites, Web surfers and site owners will benefit from the use of Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS) and Web Standards.
Let’s begin our journey with a brief trip back in time. During the 1990’s the internet was growing at an extraordinary rate, as well as the technologies that supported it. No one ever expected the Web to become what it is today. Consequently the coding standards were very basic. As technologies grew so did the desire to build beyond the basic structure that Web pages started out to be. Designers started to use html to do things it was never originally designed to do, mix in a handful of JavaScript and we had the makings of some fairly sophisticated Web sites that pushed technology to the edge. Designers used every trick in the book to get Web pages to do some pretty spectacular things. But they preformed these tricks using methods that were never intended to be used in these ways, hence things got out of hand very quickly.
Soon designers realized that they needed a better way to build sites and a more meaningful way of presenting content. This is where CSS and Web standards came to the rescue. But our troubles were not over because browsers would not support these technologies for years to come.
Why aren't Most Designers using Web Standards?
Web standards have been here since the late 90’s and today most browsers in use have reasonably good compliance levels. So why aren’t designers designing Websites using these well documented Web standards when there are ways to design and build Websites without using old-school methods and without sacrificing the aesthetic benefits?
For many designers giving up their old ways was difficult. Not only did they have to learn an entirely new way of designing sites, they also had to give up methods they stood by for years. So the reasoning was, “If what I do works, why change?”
The first step towards any change is understanding the need for change. It is this understanding that will fuel the fire and drive people to change. So the question goes from, “If what I do works, why change?” to “What are the benefits of changing”.
The benefits of using Web standards are abundant. Entire groups of people have banned together and devoted their time to make these benefits a reality and show others that they can build better, more efficient Web sites, more meaningful content and accessibility for all.
The most obvious benefit of building sites using CSS and Web standards is faster page loads. These two technologies work together to increase the efficiency by reducing the amount of page code needed to build a Web page.
Once old-school methods are removed from our coding practices we can begin to form well structured information. This is done by separating content from presentation. By using CSS and Web standards we can build eye pleasing Web pages while still maintaining well structured content.
Sites become easier to build and take less time to maintain when these standards are employed. Because content is separated from presentation, sites can be easily changed to sport a different look yet the content remains untouched. Rebuilding a site no longer requires a ‘from the ground up’ approach. This not only saves Web design time, but site owners’ money.
We now can have faster loading pages and sites that are easier to maintain, but the buck doesn’t stop there. There is another important benefit that comes from using CSS and Web standards, one that may not be so obvious and one that is often over-looked. This is the benefit of accessibility.
When most people hear about Web accessibility, they think of people with visual impairments and screen readers. But this is only part of the whole accessibility picture. Accessibility also involves the ability for devices other than a computer screen to use and/or display information from the internet. So what makes a site accessible?
What Makes a Site Accessible?
Making your site accessible across a wide range of devices and the way people use the web can be a real challenge. There are several things that need to be considered during the design phase. Will the site be accessible to people with visual impairments, or on wireless devices? What will happen to the sites layout if someone increases the font size or views it with images turned off? How will the content look when a page gets printed? All of these things need to be address during the design of a site and in the future when the site grows. Sadly though, most designers are just not up to the challenge. They continue to design using outdated techniques which are leaving hundreds of thousands of people in the dark.
How are People with Visual Impairments using the Web?
Let's consider how screen readers affect the sites accessibility factor. Screen readers are used by people with visual impairments. Designing a site so that it is user-friendly for these individuals is a design challenge in itself. But it is a challenge that must be addressed.
Not everyone with visual impairments use screen readers though. Many more individuals just need a boost in text size. Millions of people experience some loss in vision sometime in their life and find reading content on computer screens to be challenging. For these individuals bumping up the text size is the answer. But when sites are not designed with this in mind, they tend to break when text is enlarged, sometimes making the site even more difficult to read or navigate.
What Happens when People Print Web Pages?
Probably the more common way people deal with sites and reading content is to simply print it out. Here again is an accessibility issue that needs to be addressed. Creating pages that are printable has been tackled in many different ways, but for most sites on the web, designing with printers in mind was not even a consideration. Worse yet, some sites will not even print readable content, sometimes cutting off text on the right side of the page. While others force people to print out ink wasting graphics and advertisements. Designers need to keep in mind that when people print pages they are printing it for the content, not the navigation bar or the advertising graphics. It is unfortunate that most sites fail to deliver on this very basic need.
How are People Connecting to the Web?
Another accessibility issue to consider is how people are connecting to the web. Today's people are on the go more than ever. These busy individuals rely on wireless devices to deliver information when and where they need it. Everything from laptops to cell phones are being used to keep people connected to the web. Designing sites for these devices is a must if sites are to reach their audience anytime, anywhere. This may very well be the most overlooked design aspect when it comes to Web site development.
Final Notes on What to Consider when Developing Sites
Here we have touched on several different accessibility and modern design issues including page load speeds, separating content from presentation and accessibility issues including screen readers, enlarged text sizes, printer-friendly pages and wireless devices. Designing sites that reach all audiences is a challenge that today's designers need to address. Building a website is easy, building one with efficiency, structure and accessibility in mind is quite another matter.
Discover More Web Design Tips that you can use to educate yourself of proper design techniques and look over what your web designer is doing with your site.