Web Standards – an unnatural feeling!
Will we ever have complete web standards? Probably not, and I am willing to bet we won’t ever see a mass-adoption and adherence towards whatever becomes of “web standards”. It isn’t that web standards are flawed – it just isn’t natural! We have, as a species, been predisposed to ignore convention and standards during development; regardless of efficiency or even common sense – sometimes it’s even out of our control. We will never see a complete and total adoption of web standards simply because standards in general fail.
Have you ever attempted buying a pair of pants without trying them on first? Why even bother, right? If I just tried on a pair of 36 waist pants at Banana Republic, why should I fear that a pair of 36’s at Kenneth Cole would be any different. I think most of us with extensive pants buying experience know; there can be a significant difference. No two pants are ever really the same, not even confidently at the same store within the same style. Throughout the thousands of years that human-beings have been creating and wearing clothing – there is still, in the 21st century, a lingering amount of doubt back-of-mind when we purchase before trying. Lets not even start on the whole “will this shrink or not” conversation. While many sites are adopting standards, there will always be lingering doubt that prevents us from being able to assume the same outcome from an action preformed on several different websites.
How many times have you walked up to a door that clearly had a pull-handle yet required pushing to open? Have you ever been in an office building with a push-handle that has a warning sign above, “Don’t push handle, alarm will sound”? How many times have you walked up to a door and been uncomfortable uncertain if you should push or pull? Will the door open in or out? There are thousands of simple actions everyday that one would think we could perform with little hesitation – yet occasionally because the lack of complete adherence to standards, we are uncomfortably surprised!
Are all standards doomed to fail? What about the all-mighty “Stop Sign”? It is a perfectly-placed well-designed red octagon; an almost universal symbol to denote the action of “stop”. Its success and mass-adoption can primarily be contributed to government interaction. At least in the United States, it is a government sanctioned standard that all public “stop signs” created by and/or placed by the government be consistently the same. However, the government’s involvement with this standard is limited to public domain. Parking garages, apartment complexes and a variety of other privately established domains have taken it upon themselves to break the standard! What do you do when you approach a green stop sign and you’ve been programmed to identify green with “go”? Even if government sanctions demanded web standards, adoption would still fail. A majority of government sites in the US and UK currently have sanctions on web accessibility, yet they still lack total compliance and adoption.
Standards make sense — economical, social, political, and even common sense! We live in a global society built on standards – but built on many different standards that aren’t together or even independently standardized. We live together on a respectively small and confined space, earth, – yet we have over six thousand different languages, thousands of different forms of currency, hundreds of different forms of batteries, a multitude of different types of power outlets, and a variety of forms of measurement for time, distance and even temperature. Web standards make sense – they just are not natural. It is in our nature to try and break the standard; to be better, unique or special – even if it doesn’t make logical sense. For every standard in place, it will be easy to find hundreds of exceptions.
- August 7th, 2006
- 13comments
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Good stuff Martin! I like the blue stop sign, it gets the point across.
I have to say that even if web standards are not followed to the T, it’s great to have them in place to set the bar high.
Will the government eventually mandate that all commercial websites .com, .org, etc. require Section 508 compliance and fulfill web standards?!?
Nick, I completely agree that Web Standards are a necessity and have done wonders for the community thus far. If anything, we need a consistent base to work from. My point is simply that no where in our culture do we really have standards – it is naive to think it will be accomplished on the web.
I doubt the government or any legal force will ever mandate “web standards”. However, web accessibility and “section 508” is a different story. I’ve recently wrote about my thoughts on government interaction there. Check out my post on A Case for Web Accessibility.
you forget that unlike government standards , web standards have been largely manipulated by commercial interests that has had negative influence on how we write the web. even today the dominating browser fails to support CSS - and that my friend translates into money we’re loosing. i spent hours making IE understand the websites I’ve written and by that lost portion of my profits.
i love writing semantic , standard compliant XHTML BUT i am not sure its worth the hassle financially. even when knowing all the bugs there are still those annoying surprises.
if we had universal and similar client site platform, then my guess is that everybody would have written the way molly does - that “ideal mark up”.
until then….
Oronm,
You make some good points – I agree with the difference between government standards and web standards. However, I believe, IE is evolving in the right direction. But yes, even our differences in browsers are another testament to how standards have traditionally failed. The desire to be different and unique often trumps the need to be standards compliant.
Excellent article on web standards. You make some extremely important points that are often ignored almost always with ill result unexpected and often unrealized by those who implement them.
Great use of Timberland’s Green stop sign. :)
Tracy,
Thanks for the comments and the photo! For those that didn’t realize, that is Tracy’s Green Stop sign from Flickr.
For those interested: I and a few news organizations such as Newsvine have started using Flickr photos to support their content. All photos used are available under the Creative Commons License
The problem with standards is the inference that (if and when consistently understood) they will be followed. The speed of technological change and adoption outpaces the deliberative speed of our standards bodies. (The speed gauge is marked with notations ‘teenagers’, ‘Web 2.0 developers’, ‘IEEE’, and ‘Congress’). Physical things (textiles excluded) seem to “get” standards compliance as a barrier to market entry more quickly than intangibles like code.
The commercial advantages to be obtained by the “embrace and extend” philosophy of standards compliance is obvious to anyone who has ever used Internet Explorer (or to a web developer trying mold a site that runs on standards compliant browsers to work at all on IE). The long tail of this experience propagates lack of compliance long after there is good reason for it, for the sake of consistency with the legacy mindset.
good read.
Appreciate the comments!
Well put. The use of analogies really help visualize the problem.
Spot on.
The biggest problem: there is no (apparent) financal incentive for large companies to adhere to standards. Oops, it’s an IE only site, we lose 10% of our customers, not a big problem, they think. Particularly if the online presense is a duplication of their physical presence, and thus getting nowhere close to the same amount of business as the brick/mortar stores. Unless there’s a big push by big companies to use standards, browser developers will be free to embrace and extend, and we’ll live with websites remaining badly formed from tag soup.
Effectively, there’s no cost of doing business because of an incompatible website. Car designs have to make sure their cars fits on roads, parking spaces, and garages, while having a gas tank that can be filled from a standard size nozzle, and tons of other usability issues. If you try to make a railcar with wheels farther or closer than the track size, you’ve just designed yourself out of business. As you point, the physical world is filled with the cost of doing business that requires you to design to specific standards. There’s no equivalent yet in the online world.
The Target lawsuit is likely going to change a lot of that if they lose it, however. (See articles prior to this).
Masem –> Agree with you. The previously mentioned Target article can be found here: The reshaping of an industry: Legal precedence set for web accessibility
Yes, I know a door with a pull handle that you have to push and I get it wrong every week. It annoys me and I try to make a mental note about the correct action for next week. However, I always forget, mess it up again, look like a fool >> repeat.
But why should I remember the direction that every door opens that I come across? I have other things to store in my brain, like how to write a form correctly so that when a user has filled in their password, pressing ‘Enter’ will submit the form. I’ll design the forms properly, if the door guy designs the door properly. Then everyone is happy.
Now I can’t get so annoyed with the bad door design that I stop going to my local football pitch, because it is the only one there is. I have to return. But there are so many websites out there containing similar content, that if I come across one that is badly designed and hampers my user experience, I’m off and I wont come back.
I agree that web standards will probably never become firmly established because of the reasons you mentioned. But also because humans are generally lazy. I’ve had to work hard to get my knowledge of web standards to where it is now and that is because I’m passionate about it. Most people wont be bothered to put in the effort when there are shortcuts (eg: Dreamweaver). It’s a shame, but you’re right, it’s just human nature.