HTML is from a bygone era
Published by on February 5th, 2006
The web moves fast, admittedly, but the number of freelance project postings asking for hand coded HTML skills - often from existing web developers who should know better - is kinda winding me up.
We’ve had W3C standards in place for long enough now for anyone but the total part-time newbie novice to know that HTML is now obsolete for web development: long live XHTML.
Yes, XHTML is one awkward letter more to type or say, but the still broad use of HTML in reference to web page construction perpetuates the lack of respect for skills in this industry. Ask anyone who really knows their stuff* and they will wholeheartedly agree that true cross-platform, cross-browser XHTML/CSS development is a holy grail with a journey mined with non standards-compliant web browsers (yes, Microsoft, I mean you).
With W3C standards in place, us web developers have the perfect excuse to measure what we do against a ‘proper’ way of doing it. There is now a right and wrong in our world. Why then do so many still choose to ignore it?
Budgets are often the cause. Cross browser/platform compliant code takes longer and therefore costs more. So corners are cut and the minority browsers - you know, those who actually do things properly - are still far too often ignored.
Here comes IE7
In our attempt to standardise, we now develop for compliant browsers, then hack the CSS to whip Internet Explorer on Windows into behaving itself along with the others. With the imminent release of IE7 - still not standards compliant yet with the terrifying promise of rendering our CSS hacking impotent - website layouts all over the land could be breaking in ways we never dreamed possible. Tears will be shed. Clients will be busting veins.
Alas I fear this will merely bolster the argument to leave web standards well alone, after all, was it not the pursuit of web standards which led to these broken web layouts in the first place.
Developers may have a fight on their hands. Perhaps now, with IE7 still in beta, there is time to get out there and educate current and future clients alike that standards are a good thing in the long term who knows, with actual use of Internet Explorer dropping - it may well be the most installed browser but the shift to Firefox cannot be denied, and my web stats are evidence of such - even the almighty Microsoft might finally accept the global benefits in accepting web development standards.
* This was something of a trick suggestion. How many people do you actually know who are genuine cross-browser cross-platform XHTML/CSS developers - and I don’t mean those who just stick it on their CVs just to use what appear to be cool buzz-words. XHTML for Dummies is not going to get you out of that hole!
Technorati Tags: ie7, xhtml, w3c
