What is a Web Standard?

By Tyler Downer
2/9/08

Standards

Web Standards are one of the many good things that came from the browser wars of the late 90s, between Netscape and Internet Explorer. During the heated battles between the two companies, the web was awash with bloated markup, incorrect usage of tags, and much worse. Whenever a browser gained a lead, web sites began to code for that browser, only to have their sites break 6 months later as the browsers switched places. It was in the midst of this confusion that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded. This bodies purpose is to produce and maintain standards the wed content creators can apply to their work. But still, what is a web standard? A stand is simply a recommendation that enables web developers to use new technologies in their work. For example, XHTML is language that is used to make web pages. It is maintained by the W3C is currently in version 1.0. However, XHTML was proceeded by HTML. This language uses very dirty markup to accomplish the same purpose of XHTML. Many web developers have decided not to follow XHTML and stay with HTML. Just because XHTML is the current standard does not mean that HTML web pages are not going to be displayed. They maybe slower and not as clean, but they will still work. This is only one example of a web standard. Standards are voluntary and it is up to you to decide what ones you want to follow.

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