The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. This includes the composition of web standards. W3C has three main goals:
- To make the Web accessible to all by promoting technologies that take into account the vast differences in culture, languages, education, ability, material resources, access devices, and physical limitations of users on all continents.
- To develop a software environment that permits each user to make the best use of the resources available on the Web.
- To guide the Web’s development with careful consideration for the novel legal, commercial, and social issues raised by this technology.
Web standards give web developers a single point of reference on the available methods, and their particular usage, for publishing information online. When developing a web application the associated standards should be adhered to wherever possible, even to the affect that the design has to be altered for compliance.
The main reason why web standards are important is ’future compatibility’. In an ideal world all browsers would display content exactly the same way, and all users would see content in the same format on the same media. This is not currently the case, during the browser wars of the late 90’s competitors Microsoft and Netscape continually introduced features to their browsers hoping to win over users. The result of this is not only mixed functionality between browsers but also mixed usage of these functionalities between web pages, some even going as far as to write several different versions of the same site, one for each main browser.
W3C standards are built on the backbone of a foundation standard called the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XML is a simple, very flexible text format which can be used to define any data structure. The data structure will be able to maintain persistence any where through the use of a DTD (Document Type Definition). Due to this standardisation of language W3C has been able to build many standard’s that are interoperable and begin to achieve W3Cs goals.
The main standards that Inventive Web Solutions adhere to are XHTML 1.0 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Both of these standards play an important role in maintaining compatibility and persistence across the Web. These standards are not only an effective way of building and maintaining a web site but they ensure that Inventive Web Solutions web sites will be compatible with an ever-changing world wide web.
By following the specifications set out by the W3C both browser developers can concentrate on supporting the specified features, in the specified ways, whilst website developers can use these features, confident of their content being available to the widest number of users.
By supporting web standards, Inventive Web Solutions have contributed to a friendlier tomorrow for the World Wide Web.
