Oxidise Design

For us, designing standards compliant Websites is a matter of principle, and a belief in doing things ‘right’. That said, we understand that you probably want more justification as to why you should believe it too. This article aims to set out some of the real world benefits of the principles. We hope that you’ll agree that there are real gains to be had in the application of a little extra thought and effort.

As the Web developed in the ’90s it grew from an idea about how scientists could share information, into the design rich environment we see today. Techniques for developing sites emerged and evolved rapidly during that time, with the emphasis being on making them look good. Unfortunately this resulted in many of the original techniques being ill suited to the demands of the 21st century information age.

All the sites we develop are made using modern techniques using XHTML and CSS. The principle behind this way of working is to semantically separate the content of your site from how it looks. This allows us to create Websites that cope better with the demands placed on them by users in a variety of situations. Some of these benefits are described in more detail below.

Search Ranking

This is probably one of the key benefits of these techniques from a site owners perspective; making Websites properly gets you noticed more!

By using simple W3C compliant HTML and XHTML pages it allows search providers like Google to analyse the content of your site more accurately. This then results in your site featuring more highly in searches related to you.

Many companies offer highly priced packages to ‘promote’ your site. These are often based around analysis of current indexing algorithms to find loopholes and tricks to fool them. Unfortunately the search providers change their algorithms regularly, so tricks that may work now could be useless, or even detrimental in a few months time. The best way to get a better placement is to understand the principles of indexing and build your site from the ground up with those in mind.

Regulation Compliance and Disability Access

Providing access to your site for those who may be visually impaired has become a major issue in Web design in recent years. Government regulations now insist on the provision of access for sites in many key areas. Outside of these regulated sectors it still reflects well on you as a company to have considered peoples needs.

Through developing sites using standards compliant techniques it is possible for us to develop solutions which seemlessly degrade from providing rich, visually captivating experiences to those able to utilise them, to simple and informative pages for those who can’t.

Phones, PDAs and other non-standard devices

Web access on devices other than standard personal computers has taken off in the past few years and the market is likely to continue to develop rapidly for the forseeable future.

Traditional development techniques were tied strongly to the assumption that a user would have a PC with a screen of a certain size in order to allow them to arrange their grahical layouts properly. Using CSS techniques we are able to provide sites which work on devices from phones to PDAs, games consoles and PCs of all shapes and sizes.

Futureproofing

Standards compliance means exactly what it says on the tin – we conform to standards guidelines set out by the W3C when developing the sites we make. This should build a level of future-proofing into our sites, as the same guidelines are what the browser developers like Microsoft and Mozilla use when developing their products. If we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet then our sites should continue to render as expected on their browsers, even as they develop them into the future.