Why are standards important?

B

bjg

rf said:
If you need to ask the question you will not understand the answer.

The reason I ask, is I have always seen standards as important for my own
personal projects, but how do you convince your boss that? I work for a
large well-known online retailer, and soon we are re-designing the site.. I
have seen the other people's work who are helping and they don't even care
about standards. Time = money and it takes time to make a site comply with
standards, especially if you're a messy coder who has no idea.

By question would have been better phrased, as what are some reasons why
standards are important for a high-traffic website? "If it looks good in IE,
who cares" seems to be the attitude at work. I don't think I can persuade
them with moral arguments...

Any ideas?
 
K

Kim André Akerø

bjg said:
The reason I ask, is I have always seen standards as important for my own
personal projects, but how do you convince your boss that? I work for a
large well-known online retailer, and soon we are re-designing the site.. I
have seen the other people's work who are helping and they don't even care
about standards. Time = money and it takes time to make a site comply with
standards, especially if you're a messy coder who has no idea.

By question would have been better phrased, as what are some reasons why
standards are important for a high-traffic website? "If it looks good in IE,
who cares" seems to be the attitude at work. I don't think I can persuade
them with moral arguments...

Any ideas?

"What if they made American roads only for Chrysler cars?"

There's a good start for a discussion whether or not you should comply to
standards. Microsoft has been in "trouble" before regarding the monopoly
they've set up in the latest Windows versions. Guess what happens then?

Also, you lose the customers who prefer to use Opera, Netscape,
Mozilla/Firefox, Safari and whatnot as their browser, simply because it
looks ugly (which makes the visitor think your company is less trustworthy).

Personally, I've made sure my new corporate website complied to standards,
and I even made it just as look good in Internet Explorer, Netscape
Navigator, Opera and Lynx. I know, I've checked.
 
C

Cameron

bjg said:
The reason I ask, is I have always seen standards as important for my own
personal projects, but how do you convince your boss that? I work for a
large well-known online retailer, and soon we are re-designing the site.. I
have seen the other people's work who are helping and they don't even care
about standards. Time = money and it takes time to make a site comply with
standards, especially if you're a messy coder who has no idea.

By question would have been better phrased, as what are some reasons why
standards are important for a high-traffic website? "If it looks good in IE,
who cares" seems to be the attitude at work. I don't think I can persuade
them with moral arguments...

Any ideas?

Because IE isn't the only browser that people use and IE has, or at
least had bugs that allow for sloppy markup, so a site will look fine in
IE but not in other browsers that actually conform to the W3C's
standards, and in reponce to your comment about time = money, a pro web
developer shouldn't take ages to write markup that is standards
compliant, I don't do it as a job (Unfortunately) but I can write
standards compliant (X)HTML that validates first time.

~Cameron
 
W

Woolly Mittens

bjg said:

One conforms to standards if one wishes the code to be interoperable.

- Standards compliant code is accessible by any end user application, which
supports the used standard.
- Standards compliant code remains servicable for as long as the standard
exists, not until the next incremental update of the most popular browser.
- Standards compliant code is readable by other coders than just you.
 
R

rf

By question would have been better phrased, as what are some reasons why
standards are important for a high-traffic website? "If it looks good in IE,
who cares" seems to be the attitude at work. I don't think I can persuade
them with moral arguments...

A much better phrasing of the question :)

Lets expand it to three things: Standards; Browser compliance; Browser error
correction.

There are N browsers out there. All of them adhere to some of the standards.
If you code exactly to the standards then there is a chance your page will
be viewable by all of those browsers and a greater chance that it will be
viewable with browsers to come. Those bits of the standards that the
browsers do not understand will not matter as they should [1] ignore those
bits. The page will still be viewable.

If you do not code to the standards then it is guaranteed that one of the
browsers out there will get upset, one way or another.

Browsers comply with the standards to varying degrees. If you stay within
the standards you will find most browsers get upset about something or
other[2]. You may just have to test your page in all browsers you choose to
support [1] and find a subset of the standards that works for you.

You will also find that certain browsers (specifically IE) have extensions
which are totally outside the standard. Use these extensions and you
guarantee that your page will break in all other browsers.

Browsers have error correction, unfortunately, IE being by far the worst
[3]. Throw any mangled bit of HTML at IE and it will make an attempt to
decide what you are talking about. Other browsers are a bit more discerning,
they will simply ignore your bad HTML. Code to the standards and you do not
fall into the error recovery guessing that browsers indulge in and, in the
case of IE, you will no fall into sloppiness complacency which you trust the
browser to correct.

[1] Look at what Netscape 4.x ( a dead browser) does with CSS. It does not
ignore what it does not understand, it guesses and gets it horribly wrong. A
browser to be avoided at all costs.

[2] IE5 and the broken box model.

[3] I spend most of my life coding in C++. With C++ There is <em>*NO*</em>
error recovery. If I make even the simplest of syntax errors, like missing a
; at the end of a statement then the compiler says: Hey, I'm not going to
compile this, code this correctly, it's your code, *you* get it right.

Cheers
Richard.
 
S

Steve R.

bjg wrote in message ...
"If it looks good in IE, who cares" seems to be the attitude at work.

That's the policy of the company that I work within. They cater for the
*majority* as in many walks of life.
 
S

Steve R.

Kim André Akerø wrote in message ....
Also, you lose the customers who prefer to use Opera, Netscape,
Mozilla/Firefox, Safari and whatnot as their browser, simply because it
looks ugly (which makes the visitor think your company is less
trustworthy).

My company's policy is that it's only *nerds* who use browsers other than
IE, so they don't give a damn about Opera etc., users
 
C

Cameron

Steve said:
bjg wrote in message ...



That's the policy of the company that I work within. They cater for the
*majority* as in many walks of life.

It is indeed shameful that companies adopt this attitude, and I aren't
going to reboot my PC, boot up winodws and open up IE just to view x
website I'm going to go find another website that actually works
properly in all browsers, Windows is there for one reason only and that
is if the desire to play morrowind or one of a few other windows
requiring games arrises, and I haven't even booted up windows for about
2 months.

~Cameron
 
M

Matthias Gutfeldt

Steve said:
bjg wrote in message ...



That's the policy of the company that I work within. They cater for the
*majority* as in many walks of life.

Eat shit - billions of flies can't be wrong!


Matthias
 
C

Cameron

Steve said:
Kim André Akerø wrote in message ....


trustworthy).

My company's policy is that it's only *nerds* who use browsers other than
IE, so they don't give a damn about Opera etc., users

I'm a geek and I don't use IE (There is a slight difference ;) ) and I'm
really hoping your company doesn't sell PC components ;)

~Cameron
 
W

William Tasso

Steve said:
Kim André Akerø wrote in message ....

My company's policy is that it's only *nerds* who use browsers other
than IE, so they don't give a damn about Opera etc., users

My company has a policy of accepting sales orders from anyone that has the
funds regardless of the technology employed and their chosen method of
payment without regard to race, religion, geography, political persuasion or
sexual orientation.

What do you sell? Would your management mind placing a sniffer on your site
and redirecting the unwanted traffic for me - I'm sure I can find a suitable
target.

Toodle-pip.
 
B

Barry Pearson

bjg wrote:
[snip]
The reason I ask, is I have always seen standards as important for my
own personal projects, but how do you convince your boss that? I work
for a large well-known online retailer, and soon we are re-designing
the site.. I have seen the other people's work who are helping and
they don't even care about standards. Time = money and it takes time
to make a site comply with standards, especially if you're a messy
coder who has no idea.

By question would have been better phrased, as what are some reasons
why standards are important for a high-traffic website? "If it looks
good in IE, who cares" seems to be the attitude at work. I don't
think I can persuade them with moral arguments...

Most people will probably answer this in relation to "what is out there". In
other words, standards are how you ensure that what you do works with lots of
browsers in lots of circumstances, some of which are still in the future. I
won't argue with that - but I think such benefits of strict conformance to
standards tends to be exaggerated. Popular browsers tend to be tolerant.
Intolerant browsers will not become popular.

My answer is very different. People developing anything need standards of
*some* kind, else they are out of control. This is most obvious where more
than one person is involved in a project, and/or the product has to be
maintained in future, perhaps by different people. These standards could be
established purely for the one project. Or they could be corporate standards.
Or ... they could be external standards. *What* they are is the second
decision - the first decision is to have standards at all. This is the
difference between engineering and amateurism.

Now, suppose you decide to have agreed standards for the project. (And surely
it isn't *that* hard to agree that you need a statement of the form "this is
what we can do, this is what we agree not to do"? If it *is* hard, you've
already lost the argument - you have a totally different value-system from the
others). What standards should you choose?

My personal answer to that is "I'll use an externally-defined standard because
in the long run it will save me a lot of effort". (I have chosen HTML4.01
Strict & CSS1+2, but that is just my opinion). Advantages in using an external
standard include:

- I don't have to specify a standard - it is already specified.
- I can be confident that all the bits were designed to work together
reasonably well.
- I am a little more confident that my pages will actually work in practice.
- I am not breaking new ground - I'm letting others do that.
- I can ask W3C for a quick check about whether I am maintaining my chosen
standard - I don't need to devise a separate test, or "just hope".
- I can expect to find components - eg. copy others' stuff, or buy stuff if
necessary.
- I can expect to be able to re-use stuff (skills, components, tools, etc) on
other projects.
- I could buy skills if necessary.
- I can get help if necessary because there are lots of experts who know my
standard.
- I am more likely to find experts who are interested in helping me if they
respect my choice.

Note - every one of those is a personal advantage. There is no altruism there.
I'm not out to protect the web, or win points in a mark-up competition. Just
develop pages in a predictable, controlled, way. (Control includes cost, risk,
and time).

I think the bit about looking good in IE is somewhat different. In addition to
choosing a standard, I *also* test against a set of browsers. But the logic
there is different - I want my pages to look reasonable "out there". There is
overlap - they are a little more likely to if I use standards. But I do keep
the 2 topics separate in my mind.
 
D

David Mackenzie

Browsers have error correction, unfortunately, IE being by far the worst
[3]. Throw any mangled bit of HTML at IE and it will make an attempt to
decide what you are talking about.

IE really lets you get away with murder. My colleage was creating a
website, and he wrote (by mistake):

<td style='border-top-style=solid'> [1]

IE "assumed" what he wanted and applied the border to the top of the
cell. Opera correctly ignored the rule, as it is invalid.

Luckily he uses Opera himself, so he corrected his markup.

To the OP: A good case you can make for writing to the standards is
that it can help the site be accessible to those with disabilities. In
many terrorities, sites that are inaccessible are considered illegal.
Obviously standards compliance is not the be all and end all of an
accessible site, but it will certainly help assistive technologies.

[1] Before you ask, it *was* for tabular data!
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

bjg said:
"If it looks good in IE,
who cares" seems to be the attitude at work. I don't think I can
persuade them with moral arguments...

Oh, why didn't you say _that_ in the first place (in the Subject line
and in the body)?

Pick up any page of the company's site, change the doctype to one that
makes IE 6 go to "standard" mode, show the result and ask them: "When
Microsoft takes the next move and turns the 'standard' mode the only
one, or at least the default, what will happen to us?"

(You may need to check this in advance. Some pages don't crash in the
'standard' mode, so pick up another one.)

If your conscience says that this is not morally quite acceptable,
since you are fooling them a bit (Microsoft probably won't do that, at
least in a few years), tell your conscience "OK, _you_ try it next".

You might also try the same by disabling JavaScript and telling that
according to yet unconfirmed news, hundreds of leading companies
worldwide are taking an action that will make company firewalls filter
out all JavaScript due to exceptionally severe security holes detected
in IE's JavaScript support, holes that have been claimed by Microsoft
not to exist, so there are no patches to come.
 
R

rf

David Mackenzie said:
Browsers have error correction, unfortunately, IE being by far the worst
[3]. Throw any mangled bit of HTML at IE and it will make an attempt to
decide what you are talking about.

IE really lets you get away with murder. My colleage was creating a
website, and he wrote (by mistake):

<td style='border-top-style=solid'> [1]

IE "assumed" what he wanted and applied the border to the top of the
cell.

Yep. IE freely allows 'HTML' syntax spread over into CSS. There was a post
here earlier today, something like:

selector
{
color: red;
background="blue"
}

where the OP was wondering why it did not work in all browsers
Opera correctly ignored the rule, as it is invalid.

If only all browsers would refuse to display invalid HTML. <dreams/>

Error correction has bread a generation if bloody lazy coders.

Cheers
Richard.
 
R

rf

Jukka K. Korpela said:
There was no question, just a question mark.

In your typical pedantic mode you have of course chosen to ignore the fact
that the question was posed in the subject line [1] (which I agree it should
not be). I can only assume that you think that your post here might be in
some way a lesson to the newbies. If so, where is the actual lesson? You
should have at last followed up the above remark with a diatribe describing
how to post to usenet in particular and to the world in general. You are
slipping Korpela.

Here, I'll copy/paste the actual question down here for you:
Why are standards important?

Now, where is your answer?

[1] If you did not see the subject line then <sarcasm> get a better
newsreader </sarcasm>
 
W

Whitecrest

"What if they made American roads only for Chrysler cars?"

A better analogy would have been "what if they build roads for everyone
but Chrysler owned by people that refuse to use air conditioning."
Personally, I've made sure my new corporate website complied to standards..

And which one would that be? I would like to see a "corporate" site
that complies with standards. (I mean large corporation like the one you
mentioned in your statement, Chrysler)
 

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