As anyone who was talked to me knows, I am a huge proponent of web standards and standards based design. For those of you who are unfamiliar with standards based design, here is a brief explanation.

Standards based design is web site design that follows and conforms to current web standards recommendations, as set by the W3C. According to their website, the W3C’s mission is:

To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

Some people may ask, why are web standards important? Same reason any set of standards are important: To promote continuity and uniformity. Think of all the standards in place in the world today: Standard Units of Weight and Measurement, Street sign colors/shapes, building/construction code, and even our state/local laws are all systems of standards. Without systems of standards, people would be free to do things as they wish. Ultimately, it would result in utter chaos. Unfortunately, that’s what happened back in the days of the browser wars in the mid-to-late 90’s.

Those of you who are fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to remember, know what I’m talking about. Different browser manufacturer’s did things their own way when it came to displaying web pages as web standards had not been published or were not widely known. Now, things are still far from perfect when it comes to browser support for HTML/CSS standards, but they are definitely better than they used to be. Browser manufacturers are getting better at their support for current design standards and W3C recommendations. A W3C Recommendation is the name for a current internet language standard and guideline, and over 110 recommendations have been published since 1994.
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