“The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many
of them to choose from.”
Andrew S. Tannenbaum
…and nowhere is the above quote truer than in the world of web
design and development. The open source and democratic nature of
the web means that it is a rapidly changing environment with new
technologies and standards vying for attention all the time. Barely
has one technology become established and supported by software and
browsers when the next is already on the horizon and of course this
is what makes the web so exciting and vital. These rapid
developments fuel the exponential growth and use of the web. The
downside of this however is that developers and designers have to
be constantly aware of the limitations of the old technologies and
conversely careful not to implement code that is too cutting edge
and is not widely enough supported, a difficult balancing act
perhaps, but one that is absolutely vital to the success of their
client’s sites.
The newest kids on the block as far as standards are concerned
are HTML 5 (opens new window) and
CSS 3 (opens new
window) and the hope is that in the next few years they
will form the bedrock for web design and mark up. Both have been in
development for some years and are only now starting to mature.
They could be the perfect pairing, HTML 5 for the content and CSS 3
for presentation, allowing coders to build more stable, faster
loading and widely supported sites and designers to create visually
rich layouts without clunky workarounds. The key to this of course
will be browsers adopting these two standards and users taking up
the new versions.
Together these two represent a considerable step forward for the
web and above all a potentially significant improvement in the
user’s experience.