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Web Standards to the rescue. One NASA Look and Feel CSS TEMPLATES
Why Web Standards?
Introduction
Making the leap into web standards development is no small decision. And after reading the first four chapters of "Designing with Web Standards" you should be convinced it is something the entire web development community needs to do. For those of you who don't want to read the book, or don't have the time, hopefully this section will hit enough of the main points for you.
I'll begin with some benefits that may appear obvious, and go into more detail while introducing a few others. And of course I'll throw in my own 2 cents here and there.
Simplicity has its advantages
Maintaining a web standards site is very easy. The HTML is so simple, and so logical that it makes no sense to continue torturing ourselves with the complex and chaotic documents generated with traditional layout methods. Look a bit deeper into the effect this has on the web and you'll see that the easy to maintain HTML document also translates logically and simply to nearly every web enabled device. Not only does this mean we no longer need to create multiple versions of a website to satisfy different audiences, but it actually opens up new audiences that have been all but ignored by traditional websites.
To put this into perspective, I'll use the explosion of mobile technology to make my point. Nearly everyone reading this paragraph has a cell phone or PDA. And a good majority of these devices will be web enabled. So why isn't everyone using them to browse the web? The answer lies with traditional website development. Today's traditional websites are incompatible with tomorrow's technologies. Had the "industry norm" been to follow "industry standards" back when web development took flight, those web enabled phones could actually be used to browse the web today.
But it's not just cellphones and PDAs that benefit. Screen readers for the visually impaired also take advantage of the clean, logical document; making their web experience much more accessible and enjoyable. Any future browser or web technology that can read html will also be able to understand these documents. In the current state of web development, every few years we are forced to re-develop our sites because of incompatiblities with new technologies.
This seems like as good a time as any to talk about 508c and Accessibility.
Why Web Standards?
NASA Fact
Insert a NASA fact here. Feel free to use a server side include or a back-end rotater.
- NASA Official: Bob Peirce
- Curator: Karen Smale
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