Web Standard - Today and Tomorrow

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Why do Standards matter? Example: screw, one of the first technological standards. The screw has been around in some way or another for about 2000 years; but hasn’t been a mass-produced tool since 1770; wasn’t really standardized until Philips Screw came about in 1930; Imagine ordering 1,000 screws for a project, and getting 1,000 uniquely shaped screws and having to use a different tool for every single one. 1,000 types of screws and equal number of screwdrivers? Standards represent consistant usability for people who create things. But, they’re not just for engineers; standards work for the end user, too. Imagine going to a store; you buy Casino Royale on DVD; you come home, put the disc in your DVD player and the screen suddenly says, “This movie will only play on a Sony Bravia Television set”. Standards mean interoperability for customers, which means they don’t have to think about the products they use. The technology behind them is transparent to the customer, which is very important. Another example of why that is so important: power outlets. Imagine that we hadn’t standardized power plugs and outlets; you’d be using your laptop and charging your phone at home just fine, but then one day you move to a different city and suddenly find out that the people who built your new house decided that they preferred four-pronged outlets to your three. None of your appliances work anymore. It is because of Standards that so much in our lives is transparent to us. Things just work .

On the web, the situation is really no different at all. Standards are simply crucial for the Web industry. Back in the late ‘90s, two browser vendors (Microsoft & Netscape) wanted to “own the web”. They both added all these proprietary extensions to their browsers, and to use them you had to use browser-specific syntax in all your code and documents. This created a situation where web developers had to build at least two separate versions of each site: one for Microsoft Internet Explorer, and one for Netscape Navigator. This is when the Web Standards Project came to be. The Web Standards Project played a big role in getting Microsoft and Netscape to play according to the World Wide Web Consortium’s rules, and implement the official specifications in their browsers. That was the first hurdle for the Web Standards Project. The next one was to get web designers and developers to use proper techniques. The situation at the time was that most every website was being built using tables for layout. This had a large number of serious downsides to it, but people were simply not aware of any better techniques for building websites. In the early 2000s, this started to change. One of the reasons behind that was the adoption of CSS.

In 1996, the very first CSS specification was formed, followed shortly by early versions of the CSS 2 specification. What happened in the early 2000s was that browsers started to implement support for CSS 1 and 2. This meant that CSS-based website designs were finally becoming feasible. Nevertheless, it still took until 2004 to get the ball rolling for real. Promotional websites like the CSS Zen Garden highlighted the amazing power and potential of using CSS for layout, instead of tables. As time passed and web standards advocacy reached greater and greater audiences, the situation on the web changed and more and more new sites would launch using CSS rather than table-based layouts. By now, in 2009, it’s becoming difficult to find websites that still use table-based layouts. Looking forward very briefly here: CSS 2.1 was finalized only just in April of this year, but already the world of web standards is moving forward. HTML 5 and CSS 3 are being developed and implemented in browsers; not all at once, but in individual modules, all with their own timeline. Some are already complete, some are barely developed at all. Back in 1999 when we only had CSS1 and HTML4. Using CSS for layout wasn’t really feasible yet.

So what is the idea behind using Standards the right way? Well, at the core of it, it all boils down to Separation. Separation of Structure, Presentation and Behavior. The Structure represents your HTML, your markup. The presentation is your CSS, and the Behavior represents the JavaScript.

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Web Standard - Today and Tomorrow - Presentation Transcript

Web Standards – Today and Tomorrow Presented by: Faruk Ates The Web Standards Project Susie Hall Interactive Design Practice Leader, Aquent
Web Standards
- Today and Tomorrow
Standards Photo by Lee Cullivan - CC licensed flickr.com/photos/leecullivan/418094829/
Web Standards Advocacy www.webstandards.org
Web Standards History 1996 2009 Future CSS 1.0 1999 HTML 4 CSS 2.1 HTML 5 & CSS 3
Benefits of Standards
- Designers
- Developers
- Marketing
- Management
Benefits of Standards
- Designers
Benefits of Standards
Benefits of Standards
Benefits of Standards
Separation
Separation
- HTML should only contain the content
- CSS & JavaScript in external files
Tomorrow's Techniques
- (And Why They're So Exciting)
Tomorrow’s Techniques
- Rounded corners without images
- CSS Gradients
- 2D & 3D Transformations
- Transitions & Animations
- Canvas & SVG
Q&A
Faruk Ateş
- farukat.es / modernizr.com
- www.webstandards.org