The Report

An Investigation into the Existence and Use of Standards in Web Design.

(An investigation based report)

Philip Steer
BSc (hons) Computing (Networks)

Contents

• FIGURES TABLE
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 1.1. OBJECTIVES AND DELIVERABLE
• 1.2. RESEARCH APPROACH
• 2. PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
• 2.1. ETHICS
• 2.2. PEOPLE
• 2.3. LEGAL
• 2.4. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
• 3. BACKGROUND THEORY
• 3.1. BASICS OF WEB STANDARDS
• 3.2. RECENT ACTIVITY
• 3.3. WEB USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY
• 4. SPECIFICS OF GOOD WEB DESIGN
• 4.1 COMMON PROBLEMS
• 4.2. GOOD PRACTICE
• 4.3. PRIORITIES
• 5. ARTICLES, PUBLICATIONS & CURRENT WORK
• 5.1. DESIGNING WITH WEB STANDARDS
• 5.2. ERIC MEYER ON CSS
• 5.3. WEB STANDARDS SOLUTIONS - THE MARKUP AND STYLE HANDBOOK
• 6. INITIAL RESEARCH
• 6.1. HTML & CSS VALIDATION TESTS
• 6.1.1. The Validation Services
• 6.1.2. Validation Results
• 6.2. FURTHER RESEARCH
• 6.2.1 Reason for survey & Expected outcomes
• 6.2.2. Design of survey
• 6.2.3. Presentation of Survey and Sample Description
• 6.2.4. Findings
• 6.2.5. Discussion
• 7. WEB STANDARD CODE
• 7.1. COMPANION SITE CODING AND DESIGN
• 7.1.1. Coding
• DOCTYPE
• PHP and Includes
• Header One
• The CSS Box Model
• If IE Statements
• Style Sheet Switching
• 7.1.2. Design
• Main.css - The Standard Layout
• Alt1.css - The Basic Layout
• Alt2.css - The Pink Layout
• Alt3.css - The Windows XP Layout
• 7.2. THE CONTENT OF THE SITE
• 7.3. THE EXAMPLE PAGES
• 7.3.1. Frontpage Example - With Tables
• 7.3.2. Dreamweaver Example 1 - With Layers
• 7.3.3. Dreamweaver Example 2 - With Tables
• 7.3.4. Handwritten Example - CSS Layout
• 7.4. READING THE CODE
• 7.5. SOMETIMES EVERYBODY MAKES MISTAKES
• 8. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
• 8.1. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EVERYONE
• 8.2. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HIGHER SKILL LEVEL USERS
• 8.3. DISCUSSION
• 9. CRITICAL EVALUATION
• 10. BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCES

Figures Table

• Figure 1 - A graph to show the CSS & HTML validation test results
• Figure 2 - A graph to show survey results for Question 7
• Figure 3 - A graph to show the survey results for Question 2
• Figure 4 - A graph to show the survey results for Question 4
• Figure 5 - A graph to show the survey results for Question 5
• Figure 6 - IE user extra content displayed.
• Figure 7 - The main layout
• Figure 8 - The main menu as viewed in IE
• Figure 9 - The 'Basic' layout
• Figure 10 - The 'Pink' layout as viewed in Firefox
• Figure 11 - The 'Pink' layout as viewed in Internet Explorer
• Figure 12 - The 'XP' layout
• Figure 13 - Scrollbars for 'XP'
• Figure 14 - The IE user extra content as displayed in 'XP' layout