Standards – A False Promise?

By Mark on Monday 11 November 2002 at 09:41

Web Standards : currently one of the hot topics in web development circles. The theory behind the use of web standards is that designers can separate design from content, through the use of Cascading Style Sheets. One of the main points is that at present, many HTML elements are either being ignored (when was the last time you used a Heading tag?) or simply not used correctly. The most prominent example here is the use of tables and spacer GIFs for page layout, when in fact they were never intended for this purpose.

In theory standards are an excellent idea, as they mean that design changes can be propagated throughout an entire site with a couple of simple changes to a style sheet. With the use of CSS positioning we can eliminate the use of tables and spacers for layout purposes completely. Designing for standards-compliant browsers also means we can avoid all those little hacks and tricks needed to get round bugs in older versions.

Or does it?

Having attempted to build sites which comply to web standards, it seems that in practice, CSS positioning has as many, if not more bugs than the old browsers’ HTML support. It seems to be extremely difficult to produce a layout which looks even remotely similar in all the major browsers, and building anything more complex than a couple of plain columns is a nightmare! Most of the nice stuff I’ve seen requires the exploitation of a bug in the IE CSS parser to display correctly, and that’s not a good foundation to build solid pages on. What if they fix it?

So if you want to use CSS to lay out your pages, it’s back to that familiar old chore of building the page, then adding a bit so it works in Netscape, then putting in some hacks so Opera displays it correctly, then realising the IE version doesn’t work anymore, then…. well, you know what I’m talking about.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am totally on the side of the web standards campaigners. I think it’s a good idea, and I think it makes complete sense to separate design and content. I also think it will do wonders for the accessibility of sites in general. However, I can’t see the point in just learning a whole new set of bugs and quirks, because in that case we may as well just continue using tables, where at least we know how to get round all those lovable little glitches…

Rant almost over I think, but please, browser coders, I’ve been swearing at and working around your bugs and glitches for years now, and I’m only 24. I’m not saying I could build a better browser than any of you, but then… it’s not my job to.

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