On Thursday, January 29, 2004, at 11:06 AM, Bradley Wright wrote:
I have a question for you all, given that quite a few of you work for
large,
CMS-type companies and the collective level of experience here is
seemingly
very large:
How many of you have experienced working for companies/clients which
actively embrace the standards and protocols/working methods we
discuss here
every day? It seems to me that very often dealing with clients and
client
needs makes using standards to the fullest an impractical thing at
best.
I'd like to know how many of you have experienced work-places where
standards are extremely important, and not just an afterthought in the
production process.
This is perhaps a little off-topic, but I think it's worth a discussion
because the PRACTICAL, real-world use of standards is surely of utmost
importance to us all.
Glenn.
I believe embracing web standards is something that starts with the the
technical team (web developers, etc), NOT at a management or board of
directors level. In short, I don't give my clients much of an option,
and in some cases, don't even bother to educate them as to what I'm
doing or why -- I feel it's an important step for the web, and by
making my websites as forward compatible and accessible as possible,
I'm not doing any harm in the process (unless of course they have a
large NN4 readership).
To me, starting a project with XHTML for semantic mark-up, CSS2 for
presentation, and at least priority 1 of the accessibility guidelines
is now (after a very short time) an automatic and effortless process.
In fact, the other week I had to build something with tables for
layout, and it took me twice as long (muttering things like "this would
be so easy with a div and some CSS").
A couple of google searches should help you get a huge list of reading
material, particularly this one:
http://www.google.com/search?q=business+case+web+standards
... of which I'll highlight this one:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000266.php
There's heaps on ALA, of which I grabbed just one:
http://alistapart.com/articles/tohell/
Then read everything here:
http://www.webstandards.org/
And this:
http://www.andybudd.com/blog/archives/000143.html
After reading all that, you'll probably ask yourself "why aren't I
doing this?", and you'll start implementing changes right away.
I don't believe it takes any extra time of effort (perhaps 5% at
*worst*) to develop new projects with standards and accessibility in
mind, once you're up to speed... this value can more than likely be
recouped in bandwidth costs alone on larger websites, and there's
always the threat of a lawsuit :)
Justin French
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