[achtungbaby]

One minute I'm seeing those cute little W3C valid buttons everywhere and developers speaking in hushed tones about Target.com...the next minute I hear a co-worker saying, "Standards are a bunch of hog wash, the result of a group of people pushing their own agendas, etc..."

And then the next minute I'm hearing some crazy stories about HTML 4 actually getting upgraded to 5 by the W3C and another group of interested folks (browser manufacturers) pushing XHTML2 I guess.

Didn't we just barely survive the dark ages of front end development? Maybe I'm overreacting but I'm not getting a good vibe...

[Azeem]

What secret agenda could people have for making websites more accessible?

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by achtungbaby

the next minute I hear a co-worker saying, "Standards are a bunch of hog wash, the result of a group of people pushing their own agendas, etc..."

Sounds like your co-worker is too lazy to bother doing his work properly, its not as if it even is any real effort to create XHTML and CSS that validates.

[pgo]

I think it's fine if we have HTML5 and XHTML2. We have HTML4 and XHTML1(.1) now and it's fine.

[RaelRode]

Theres not much point in having HTML5 or xHTML2 because theres only going to be minor changes to it. UNless they're going to completely change the whole coding concept whats the point!

[cam]

Originally Posted by RaelRode

Theres not much point in having HTML5 or xHTML2 because theres only going to be minor changes to it. UNless they're going to completely change the whole coding concept whats the point!

erm, HTML5 and XHTML2 are completely different.

[achtungbaby]

Originally Posted by pgo

I think it's fine if we have HTML5 and XHTML2. We have HTML4 and XHTML1(.1) now and it's fine.

Right, hence the transitional. Now I guess the transition to XML will be even longer, until the W3C decides that front-end peeps are ready for it. At the same time we have representatives from different browsers getting more and more involved in the process and discussion for defining those very standards (I read somewhere recently that a Microsoft rep. is chairing one of the HTML5 subcommittees).

[skyrocket]

must admit my spider-sense has been going off on this one too. it's as if the w3c are not driving the car anymore. they didn't put together the html5 specs - they came from whatwg. i hope i'm wrong but the w3c seems to be in some disarray at present. xhtml 2 has been described as being "dead in the water" and css 3 isn't getting too many rave reviews either from what i read. there could be some dirty pool politics going on here - who knows? not mentioning any large companies based in redmond but there's a lot at stake so it's not surprising that conspiracy theories are surfacing...

[Dusteh]

I agree, I think the W3C is now driven by companies interested in mobile technology (with interoperability being low on their list of priorities), the traditional webs advance has fallen into a poor second place.

Now 3rd parties are getting stuck in to fill the gap, and if they are well respected (which they are) it brings up the conundrum, who's standards are we following now, and can you even call them standards if they are not universally agreed upon? Surely it becomes a battle just like the old Microsoft / Netscape proprietary rules.

http://www.whatwg.org/
http://wcagsamurai.org/

[Transmogrify]

In some ways, it's possibly not such a bad thing. Maybe the browser developers will have time to concentrate on getting the current standards right, which they've not done, without throwing a new set of standards into the mix for them to fuck up, again.

[niloyd]

Hi Guys, Im new to this forum, was looking around for help on building a W3C compliant website, in my 7 years of Web designing, I have had the first client who wants a W3C compliant website, can any one point me on getting started or point me to the Rules and Regs of Coding a W3C compliant website?

[steveb]

Try looking through this: World Wide Web Consortium

Although if compliant websites have to look like that, I'd advise you to have nothing to do with them.

[niloyd]

Steve, thanks, I will look into this link...
And yeah I am not a fan of this whole W3C thingy, really hampers creativity...
I wonder what 2advanced.com would do to make their W3C versioned website.

[pgo]

Originally Posted by niloyd

And yeah I am not a fan of this whole W3C thingy, really hampers creativity...

Bullshit - bullshit - bullshit!

The irony of that is hilarious, "I'm not a fan of this whole W3C thingy." You might as well say, "I'm not a fan of the people who invented the web and the technologies that make it work."

If you're actually ignorant of who the W3C are and what they do, I'd assume you're still laying sites out with tables and invalid markup which means your skills are basically 5 years out of date. Here's a recent article on the topic: "Lame excuses for not being a web professional."

And...2advanced.

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by niloyd

Steve, thanks, I will look into this link...
And yeah I am not a fan of this whole W3C thingy, really hampers creativity...

Jesus christ, you really don't have a clue do you. Just because the W3C websites are very bland, boring and uninspired doesn't mean if you follow standards your will be too.

css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design - There are some very clever things you can do with XHTML and CSS if you put your mind to it, and willing to do it properly.

The whole point of following standards is so you can reliably create a website exactly how you want it to behave and appear in any browser on any platform.

Standards does not hamper creativity, or limit you in any way. Some people are good at designing, and some people are better at coding. The theory behind it is to actually save you time, by reusing presentational code (css classes)... and meaning you dont have to create a different website for each browser, ala netscape vs ie.

Most websites that fail at web standards validation are usually forgetting to close an element, or using out of date methods. Nothing usually major to fix about it, just an unskilled developer creating it using some crappy program like dreamweaver.

Originally Posted by niloyd

I wonder what 2advanced.com would do to make their W3C versioned website.

There are standards compliance methods of adding an swf to a page, literally takes 2 seconds to google and copy and paste.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by pgo

Bullshit - bullshit - bullshit!

ha ha, thats him told

[Larixk]

Originally Posted by Azeem

What secret agenda could people have for making websites more accessible?

Accessible websites make it harder to secretly eat people's babies.

It does seem the W3C are loosing control a bit. Have to admit though, I haven't really read that much on the topic of HTML5.
But could this lead us into another kind of browserwar? With consortia (-ums) bidding up to eachother with fancy features and marquee-tag-thingies?
Browserwar 2.0 if you like?

[steveb]

Originally Posted by freelancr

The whole point of following standards is so you can reliably create a website exactly how you want it to behave and appear in any browser on any platform.

As you must know, following the standards and recommendations gets you nowhere when the major browser is partly non-compliant. Many of the workarounds and fixes which html-coding requires for IE to display correctly are non-compliant anyway and throw up error messages when validating on W3C's validation service.

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by steveb

As you must know, following the standards and recommendations gets you nowhere when the major browser is partly non-compliant. Many of the workarounds and fixes which html-coding requires for IE to display correctly are non-compliant anyway and throw up error messages when validating on W3C's validation service.

For my recent work I have built several websites that appear and behave correctly on IE7, IE6, Firefox and Opera. They validate to XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0 standards.

There are no need for "hacks" anymore since conditional comments came along. So long as you have a valid doctype on the first line, and don't put IE6 into quirks mode, it really isn't all that bad.

[niloyd]

Guys, I had made a topic in the help section for this, I have some Qs there, so can you guys reply in that thread, I cant post the URL here because I have not completed 15 posts.