TW Blog :: Entries for Web Standards
Superstition sets the whole world in flames; Philosophy quenches themVoltaire
Conforming WWT To Web Standards
Also relates to Accessibility and CSS Design
I recently came across the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust website. An excellent cause, and close to the heart, with a local centre not far from me in Slimbridge. The website is full of content, but alas, like so many, the markup of the site heralds back to the old days of extensive table nesting, deprecated font tags and shim graphics. With extensive content, I would like to have been able to view the site through my Lynx browser, for quick access and navigation, but the markup simply doesn't make this feasible.
There still seem to be so many websites in the UK being built with bad practices and lack of conformance for Web Standards and Accessibility. It is a real shame! And perhaps potential clients need to better informed of the cost-benefits, potential visitor revenue, indiscrimination, and search engine optimisation that can all be acheived by a confirming website. Anyway, I decided to have a quick stab at cleaning up the home page of the WWT, using CSS 2 and XHTML 1.0 Strict.
The first draft (well actually it is the second, since the first pass with absolute positioning seemed to create some rendering issues across browsers) seemed to fit together quite nicely. It carries well across all the major Windows Browsers ( IE, Netscape 7, Mozilla and Opera 7) however I haven't had a chance to test it on other platforms yet.
The draft is still fairly rough, but the XHTML validates as does the CSS, and although I have not fully optimised the MarkUp to meet the most stringent of Accesibility Guidelines, I have added appropriate markup to allow the to page meet the requirements for Level A Conformance.
The benefits are immediately obvious.
- Excluding images, the file size has been more than halved from 29.4 KB to 13.6 KB for both the XHTML document and supporting style sheet. If just 0.1% of the WWT members visit that single page per day, the bandwidth savings will be in excess of 45MB per month! Hypothetically, if the server is on metered bandwidth, that could translate to a major cost saving if the total number of visitors and page views per month are put into the equation. Bandwidth usage could actually be reduced by another 8KB (per visitor per page) if the graphical navigation system were removed in favour of CSS.
- The page is now portable across a wide spectrum of User Agents, including PDA's, WebTV, Braille and Screen Readers. Not only does this avoid discrimination, it equates to potential for a higher turnover of visitors. (Actually the ugliest display may come out in IE5.x, since I have not incorporated the Box Model Hack into the current stylesheet yet).
- The separation of content and design allows much better management of the site copy, optimisation of search engine key terms, and cleaner markup for navigation and spidering by WebBots and the like.
When I get some time I hope to improve on the current version and see how low I can actually get the bandwidth usage. I will also raise a few of the issues that I have encountered.
Posted on Jul 01, 2003 at 22:36:48. [Comments for Conforming WWT To Web Standards- 0]
The Web Standards Bible
Also relates to Accessibility
I must just recommend Zeldman's new publication Designing With Web Standards to everyone who has the slightest interest, or concern, over Web Standards and Accessibility. It is an excellent voyage through the thinking that has seen Web Design go full circle, with the table-design revolution of the late 90's now being firmaly replaced by the true vision of the Web - distinct structure and content. The prose is occassionally repetitive in the early chapters, but hopefully this will help get the point across to those who are slightly blind (excuse the pun!) to the work of the W3C and the Web Standards Project.
In a way it is a shame that IE is still so dominant on the browser market, since combining some of the more advanced features of CSS with well structured XHTML makes for an exciting prospect. Perhaps the Microsoft crew might take note of standards promulgations, and make a concerted effort to improve IE support for standards in its next release. Of course this is going to require the user market upgrade to whatever OS Microsoft release next. So I guess as a developer, it is extended play time on the far more pleasurable browsers from Mozilla and Opera for the foreseeable future.
Back to the Bible, grab your copy from Amazon and help educate your clients on the importance of Standards.
A Rosetta Stone of web design.Don Buckley, Senior Vice President, Warner Bros. Pictures
Posted on Jul 01, 2003 at 02:53:41. [Comments for The Web Standards Bible- 0]
