> Has anyone else seen any changes in larger organisations? Yep, we do work for some medium-to-large companies and nonprofits in the US (Clairol, Marriott, Disney), and while individual client interest in standards varies (usually dependent on clients' general technical awareness, IMO), we do get some questions about it, and clients are always happy when we implement standards-based solutions. Nonprofits and government clients almost always focus on it as a requirement. Once deployed (especially for db-driven sites) cost of updates drops dramatically, which is a significant ROI.
> I suspect the problem with the biggies is normally that they have grown so > big that making significant changes in the name of web standards isn't as > big a priority as other business aims, such as increasing sales, etc. I agree that the "big guys" are going to be late adopters, due primarily to bureaucracy and the use of non-standard third party CMSs (and they focus more energy on ad sales than standards compliance). Some ad services simply send a code snippet that must be included to display ads - site owners cannot control standards compliance within this snippet either. I'd be interested in seeing a study that links standards to CMSs, ad services, etc., rather than just URLs - it would get more to the heart of the issue. I would also be interested in hearing how many of those site owners are *happy* with their sites' status quo. Referencing all of those sites is merely an effective illustration of a common situation - it is illogical to conclude that these site owners prefer nonstandard deployments. Chris ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
