8. What are Web Standards?
Standards are rules and
methodologies that make building
things easier.
And the results better.
9. Open vs Closed Standards
Open Standards are made by the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in public,
through debate, discussion leading to agreement.
Closed Standards are made by a single company, in secret,
according to the business needs of that company.
10. Dangers of a closed-standard culture
South Korea is a nation that at the forefront of technology,
an early adopter of ecommerce, leading the world in 3G
mobile adoption, in wireless broadband, in wired
broadband adoption, as well as in citizen-driven media.
But the Web is in hands of a single corporation.
http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s
11. Advantages of Open Standards
The Web works everywhere - The Web is the platform
● Good standards help developers: validate; separate content and
presentation - means specialisation and maintainability.
● Good standards help site owners: more maintainability; smaller
pages; better SEO (webometrics)
● Good standards help site end-users: light-weight; findable;
interoperable; more likely accessible
● Write once, work everywhere (you can't test every device!)
12. Case study - Legal and General
British based financial services company that provides life,
health and other insurance, as well as pensions and
investments.
Its shares trade on the London Stock Exchange as part of
the FTSE 100 Index. Major markets include U.K., France,
Germany, the Netherlands and the United States.
www.landg.com
13. Legal and General's re-design
● 30% increase in natural search-engine traffic
● 75% reduction in time for page to load
● Browser-compatibility (no complaints since), accessible to mobile
devices
● Time to manage content “reduced from five days to 0.5 days per
job”
● Savings of £200K annually on site maintenance
● 90% increase in life insurance sales online
● 100% return on investment in less than 12 months.
www.brucelawson.co.uk/pas78
15. HTML
● Hypertext Markup Language
● HTML is for information
● HTML describes the meaning of your information
● Presentation (fonts, colours, layout, decoration) is not
meaning – it's style
● HTML is just text, so it's light and any device can consume
it: screen readers, braille displays, in-car voice
browsers, old mobile phones, search engines
16. Cascading stylesheets for presentation
CSS provides a way to abstract styles from meaning.
Include it in the head and style the whole site:
table {width:500px; border:1px solid white;}
th {background-color:blue; color:white; text-
align:center;}
tr {background-color:white; color:black;}
tr:nth-child(even) {background-color:#66FFCC;}
17. JavaScript for behaviour
Using principles of unobtrusive JavaScript, I'll add Stuart
Langridge's Sorttable script (kryogenix.org):
<script src="sorttable.js"></script>
<table class="sortable">
Check out the sortable table
18. <canvas>
Canvas is an immediate graphics mode for modern browsers.
Placeholder for scripted images/ animations.
<canvas>Fallback content</canvas>
Tutorials (write your own games!)
http://dev.opera.com
Search for “canvas”
21. HTML5
“... extending the language to better support Web
applications, since that is one of the directions the Web
is going in and is one of the areas least well served by
HTML so far.
This puts HTML in direct competition with other
technologies intended for applications deployed over the
Web, in particular Flash and Silverlight.”
22. HTML5 goodies
● Drag and drop
● Cross-window, Cross-domain messaging
● Web workers
● Adding toolbars <menu>, <command>
● WebStorage
● Geolocation
● Register protocol handler, content type handlers
● Server-sent events <eventsource>
23. What does this code do?
<object width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie"
value="http://www.example.com/v/LtfQg4KkR88&hl=en
&fs=1"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<embed
src="http://www.example.com/v/LtfQg4KkR88&hl=en&f
s=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
allowfullscreen="true" width="425"
height="344"></embed>
</object>
25. Handphone/ devices development 1
Write simple content and use a simple design. KISS
Photo credit: Mild Mannered Photographer, http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexerde/2433520958/
26. Handphone/ devices development 2
Define size of images in your HTML, use alt text
● <img height=”200” width=”100” alt=”company logo”>
● Images take a long time to load, so tell the browser to leave a
space for them
● If you don't, when the image finally loads, the browser will redraw
the page to fit the image in
● Your users will be angry if the content they were reading scrolls off
the screen to make space for images
● Redrawing the screen wastes processor time (and battery life)
27. Handphone/ devices development 3
Put your JavaScript at the bottom of your page if possible
● Browsers wait for JS to load. If they're at the top,
rendering pauses.
● If your JS is at the bottom of the page, the user can read
the content etc while she is waiting to interact with the
page.
28. Handphone/ devices development 4
Minimise HTTP requests
● The slowest part of rendering your pages on handphones is
requesting a file (JS/ CSS/ image) over the network
● Combine JS into one file. Same with CSS.
● Use CSS sprites to combine decorative images
● Consider encoding images directly in your page as data URLs
● Use SVG or <canvas> for images
29. Handphone/ devices development 5
Use CSS Media Queries to reformat your page
for different devices
@media all and (min-width: 480px) and
(max-width: 800px) {your CSS here}
@media all and (min-width: 400px) and
(max-width: 480px) {other CSS here}
30. The Standards-based workflow
● Know and understand your tool set.
● Use the right tools (HTML, CSS, JS, Media Queries).
● Validate your code (validator.w3.org, JS Lint).
● Use Opera Dragonfly and debug menu to hunt down
errors and kill them, or just see what's going on.
● Check your work regularly in Opera desktop at different
screen widths, Opera Mini and other browsers.
● This is an iterative cycle. It will save time.
31. Why you need to know
Open Standards
● oppose dominance by one corporation and so promote
choice
● promote inclusion (slower networks, older computers,
people with disabilities)
● lower development cost - work smarter, not cheaper
● These will be hot skills in a few months' time: get
them now!