How I code
The web sites I develop have the following features:
- Web Standards Compliant
- Accessible
- Semantic Code
- Adaptive Design
If that sounded like a lot of meaningless jargon to you then read on for an expanded explanation. If this sounds like just what you're looking for you can read about the services I offer, or contact me.
Web Standards Compliance
Standards bring many advantages to any marketplace, web design and development is no different. Web standards are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). You can find out more about web standards at the W3C itself, or read a good summary at the Web Standards Project site.
Let's look at some advantages of standards compliant web design:
Increased Efficiency, Decreased Cost
Standards compliant web pages are easier to create, edit and update, plus they adapt easily to multiple platforms (for example Print, PDA, WebTV, Phone). This means I can deliver and maintain a cross-platform site for a lower cost and in less time.
Additionally, standards compliant sites are smaller and therefore download faster, an obvious improvement for the users of your site. Less obvious is the reduction in bandwidth needed to host your site (important if you pay per megabyte for your site bandwidth) and the load placed on your web server.
Quality Assurance
Building a web site to standards helps to ensure it will perform the intended functions across a wide range of conditions. It also allows an independent measure of how well the site has been constructed using the W3C's validator software. For instance you can follow these links to see whether this page has valid XHTML and CSS code.
Multiple Sourcing
Standards compliant code is understandable and editable by any competent web developer, so you won't be locked in to one company or individual.
If you'd like to read more about the benefits of web standards or how to go about buying a standards compliant site the W3C has some useful pages, see "Buy standards compliant Web sites", "My Web site is standard! And yours?" and the Web Standards Project has a good summary.
Accessibility
The W3C has an expanded discussion of the "Business Benefits of Accessible Web Design" A short summary of accessibility is given below.
There are two basic categories of visitors to your web site: People and Machines. It's important that your site is accessible to everyone, after all what business can afford to exclude customers? Should a charity or government site turn away visitors? And should schools and universities turn away students, staff or benefactors?
To People
Many web sites exclude visitors because of the way they've been constructed. Such visitors include those with poor vision or that are blind, those using older or even the very latest web browsers, those using alternative operating systems like Linum, and those not using desktop PC's for access (WebTV, Mobile Phones, PDAs). However a standards compliant site goes a long way to meeting the needs of all those users, as well as your main audience. As well as using web standards I also follow the suggestions of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
To Machines & Software
One of the ways in which visitors reach your site is through web search engines and indices (such as Google, Lycos, Yahoo and MSN). The information in the databases used by these engines is mostly collected automatically using software referred to as either a 'robot', 'spider' or 'crawler'. If you've used a search engine you'll probably have noticed how bad searches often are. This is because it's so hard for machines to understand the structure of most web sites. However standards compliant sites with semantic code are much easier for machines to understand and index. This means better search rankings for your site, and better search results for everyone.
In short, web standards combined with semantic coding (discussed below) and thoughtful design ensure sites are accessible to the widest possible audience.
Semantic Code
It's quite possible to use web technologies to create sites that look good but have awful XHTML or HTML code. A semantically coded document has its own clear structure, with separation of content and presentation. Semantic code facilitates the understanding of web pages by web designers, search engine robots and web browsers. It speeds site development and redesign, improves search ranking, and assists multi-platform site access. It may not be visible to a web sites visitors but it enhances their ability to find and view that site.
Adaptive Design
By Adaptive Design I mean designs which are able to change and adapt to the browser or device being used to access the site. The World Wide Web is a relatively new medium. Much of web design to date has tried to reproduce other media such as print or television, where designers have been used to a high degree of control over output. The same level of control is simply not possible on the web. Every computer monitor displays colour in a slightly different way, pages may be printed for reading off-line and with web sites now being viewed on everything from Televisions to mobile phones, there is simply no control over colour or document size.
Summary
In attempting complete control of a web sites graphic identity web designers often exclude part of the potential audience (as described in the accessibility section above). In contrast my use of web standards combined with accessible and adaptive design allows web sites to adapt to the output medium being used whilst still maintaining a cohesive identity or brand.