Andrew Maben wrote:
Wow, that's kinda harsh - and at Christmas!!
Sorry Andrew, I always come out wrong with these things. It's a warning
as opposed to a criticism. I'm only on this list because I think
standardisation is an integrally good idea, especially when it serves
purposes.
> (Who could he mean??)
When I mention 'standardistas', it tends to draw up tribal defensive
feelings. By no means am I criticising standardistas in general. I just
think that the banner of standards is often used to patronise people
without due cause. When you belittle your client and ignore their
concerns without being able to justify your own enthusiasm for
standards, you need to take a step back and ask yourself why you're
doing it.
Standardistas are a majority. Their guiding hand can be extremely useful
to the uninitiated, but they must guide with reason. I'm concerned that
inventive, creative coding and design is often dropped simply because of
standard practice. This is tragic. Guidelines must evolve. If we all
just follow them without knowing why, that can't happen.
If you have good reason (and good reason abounds), you are utterly
successful in my eyes.
I think you've got it backwards. Those of us who aspire to live in a
standards-based www are not fascists trying to impose some arbitrary and
unreasonable set of conditions. We just want our stuff to "just work".
Our fight is not with users or clients, or even our competitors, but
with monopolist organizations who use their flouting of standards as a
weapon against their competitors.
Monopolies and fascists are different, and both are threats. Monopolies
have corporate interests at heart and will not serve the public if there
is no louder voice - hence W3C.
There is the further threat of general disorganisation and confusion
within the trade - and the Standards Project seeks to remedy this as
much as it does the discompassionate hand of developers with market
share in mind.
I argue with neither of these in principal. To the contrary, I uphold
them. But as much as it is crucial to do a lot of the research,
thinking, development and guidance for mere individuals who cannot by
themselves see the greater picture, I am greatly discomforted by cases
where people come into situations where their abidance of standards is
seen as faintly ridiculous, and they cannot rationalise it themselves.
Andrew Ingram wrote:
> The justification for charging more is
> experience and expertise.
Exactly. I believe that experience and expertise as regards standards is
indispensable. A complete lack of experience or expertise but huge doses
of enthusiasm regarding standards is worth nothing - and it is dodgy
territory when you believe that, even though you could never argue this
rationally, it is in fact worth just as much.
...
Rather than playing devil's advocate all my life (nobody's too keen to
divulge answers, only further questions!), I think I might come clean
and tell you all why I respect validation:
It's a universally approved and agreed way of reducing code ambiguity to
the bare minimum. Massive fundamental differences in the various ways
documents can be mis-interpreted are ruled out with validation.
As far as markup is concerned, I am actually entirely supportive of
'validity' as it stands. Not blindly enthusiastic about, but
understanding and respectful of it when it tells me my code needs extra
/ more concise information.
As far as CSS is concerned, I cannot respect it fully because
as it stands, complex CSS designs that are utterly valid will fail in
their intended goal - near-enough identical computing on all major
systems. The only reason this is the case is because developers haven't
held their side of the bargain - and validity is not useful in and of
itself, only if it represents a working method - which in this case it
doesn't. I bypass validity here and achieve the desired end I believe is
more important: identical content for all users.
Regards,
Barney
P.S.: I just want to make it clear that I'm not challenging anyone here.
Sharron's analogy is a brilliant one but it can work both ways - a web
designer with superior ideas they can't communicate to you, and their
ideology on the cuff of their spotless shirt, isn't somebody clients
will sympathise with. You need to show them why. When standards alienate
the people the website is for, something has gone disastrously wrong.
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