Web Standards (en)
Websites, that are developed with web standards, have many advantages for the developer, the buyer and the user. Some groups from Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain and the USA made it their business to fight for a wide circulation and use of web standards.
What are web standards and what are they good for?
Web Standards are internationally approved standards to develop and interpret future-proof web content. They allow for making content available for a preferably large audience. The seperation of structure (HTML) and presentation (CSS) is one of the important steps towards web standards.
Advantages
I have compiled a list of some of the advantages:
- Keep down costs
- Easier maintainance
- Smaller files, faster loading -> lower provider costs
- Faster development of web sites
- Easier redesign
- Search engine optimization (simpler structure makes sites readable for machines, thus for search engines)
- Web Standards make sites more accessible (accesibility = availability of content without restrictions, i.e. by disability, vision impairment of users, but also by alternative operating systems (i.e. Linux) or user agents (i.e. Firefox, Screenreaders), etc.)
- Websites become more accessible just by using web standards
- Full accessibility is easier to achieve
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Independency from user agents
- Websites work in all popular browsers
- Alternative devices are supported (i.e. Screenreader, Mobile phones, PDA)
- Older browsers are supported
- Sites become more easily printable
- Text-browsers (i.e. Lynx) render sites correctly
- Future-proof (sites will work in future releases of user agents)
This is just a short roundup of the advantages of web standards. If you need further information I recommend these links:
This list will be updated constantly.