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Why do you believe web standards are important?
Every industry has its controls, the construction industry standards ensure that people's houses conform to safety regulations the standards ensure a mark of quality help to ensure a level of service in the publics minds and allow regulation in the industry. This isn't to say that's what the [web design] industry is in need of policing, the standards also help us all move in the same direction this includes the designers coders and the technologists who make browsers and plugins alike.
What is the most important thing about web standards?
Their focus on the end user, and their ability to unify the process of web design to one site fits all browsers.
Why doesn't everyone follow them?
Some designers initially believed the standards would affect their ability to produce high quality design; it turned out to be a false belief. Others work with 3rd party plugins like flash and quicktime, which aren't 100% compatible with the standards yet. And others simply don't know that the standards exist.All of which I add are under revision constantly.
What is the hardest thing to follow about web standards?
Their application. As with every technological standard, (and I assume every kind of standard) there are a lot of different sections to the standards for each technology then there are standards for the final product so if you CSS meets w3c validation your xhtml validates to 1.0 strict you may still face a rebuild depending on you WIA triple AAA rating, keeping all of the standards in mind all the time is tricky.
Why are open standards better than proprietary code?
An open standard allows the people who work with the code to have an active hand in developing the standards, as well as those who will end up using the code. A democratic solution for the world.
Do you think there is any way web standards can be enforced?
No. in a word. The web will move as the web always does. Peers checking and advising. The word is that governments will step in so anyone caught in the UK will receive a fine but that's website providing a service to the general public, for me this language is to unspecific, what constitutes a service? Information? As the technology we use gets faster maybe the web servers [the machines] themselves will police the code. Until then its down to everyone to help.
Who, principally benefits from following web standards?
The end user, anyone who uses the web, of course the companies that code to web standards will benefit themselves and their clients. (faster build tiems and so on)
What is more important to you? : usability / accessibility, aesthetics, price of design and build, ease of maintenance, clear and concise code.
All of these are of primary concern to me, accessible design should include the code. And as I said good design doesn't exclude standards.
Do you believe that following web standards can save companies money overall?
Yes (especially if those fines are enacted). All in all with the layout separated from the code amends to the design or content are made much, much faster therefore time and money saved.
Is there any times / has there been any times when you do not / cannot (could not?) follow web standards?
Yes, but now this is only when embedding flash movies into a page and recently we have been perfecting a way of doing even that with the minimum of fuss and still having compliant code.
Do all members of the design / build team follow these standards?
Yes all of our staff conform to w3c recommended standards
Are you aware whether or not coders follow any particular standards / practices for back-end applications as you do for front-end code?
Yes and in their case where rare in ours not conforming to standards will break the application they code in. Which should really push the designers to put even more effort into testing code.
Which do you believe is more important? : Correctly written HTML or Aesthetically pleasing designs?
See above these are not mutually exclusive
In searching the Internet I have found numerous benefits and pros for following the standards. What benefits do you think they bring?
Control and ever increasing complexity to the design and applications we build.
What are the cons of following these standards, if any?
Complexity of code.
Do you feel the work you do is affected by incompatibilities between browsers?
Yes all the time.
What stands out most between browsers?
Internet explorers poor application of web standards.
In your eyes which is the best browser? Why is this?
I'm a fan of the mozilla firefox browser. Its application of standards ("while not perfect") is by far the best in the market. Its control and feature set developed by the community is the strongest there is. However running a close second is the current build of Opera
Which do you consider the worst browser and why?
I.E 5.0 5.5 and 6 the incompatibilities shared by these browsers compared to others is astounding and fixing a bug in 5.0 will break something in 5.5 fixing that will break 6 fixing that breaks every browser on earth.
Do you find you have to write a lot of work arounds to make a site work similarly or the same in all browsers?
A lot, my primary CSS "hack" is to exclude IE from major sections of the code and then write IE fixes obeying the cascade order. Time consuming and annoying.
What is your most common complaint about browsing applications?
The box model interpretation of IE 5.5 which includes the margin and padding in the overall size of an element as apposed to adding these on after so a real interpretation would be:
Element Size = 500 border = 1 Margin = 10
Total size = 511
IE 5.5 will do
Element Size 500 border = 1 Margin = 10
Total Size = 500
Actual element size 489
Absoluely absurd.
Do you feel incompatibilities will be resolved in the near future?
No, Microsoft has no plans at all to fix the errors in its existing browsers.
Do you feel that too many companies would rather write code that works in IE on Windows instead of producing sites that will work in all browsers regardless?
In the past yes but all companies would be wise to present a good looking web page to IE as it is still the largest player in the market.
Do you feel that there should be a pre-release test of all browsers, testing both the quality of the software and it's standards compliance?
Opera and Mozilla now do this hopefully IE may catch on one day who knows
Any other comments?
A few years back web designers either put "optimised for internet explorer" or built three versions of a site to make sure major platforms and browsers were supported properly. This was because each browser tried to improve on html and added its own code to the html lexicon these times are referred to as "the browser wars" each technology was licensed to its creator. When the w3c brought all players to the table and reached agreement with the browser manufacturers to adhere to standards, it allowed faster and better builds to websites that allowed us [designers] and them [browsers] to concentrate on providing a better service to the user. Things do eventually improve