Web Design Standards
Web design from L.T. Creations, LLC. assures that industry standards have been followed. Often you will hear questions about whether standards exist. Clearly, as found at the Wold Wide Web Consortium, there are standards to which every Web site should comply. Many Web site developers do not concern themselves with whether or not everybody can view their work. Generally they feel that because they use a 'popular' Web design software they don't have to know about anything else - they assume that the program does everything for them. However, by not complying to these standards and not being concerned with them, viewers will either quickly leave a Web site where the pages are not rendered correctly or perhaps they won't even be able to access the Web site. If you're selling a product or information it's imperative standards be met or your traffic and sales will plummet. Are you willing to accept that only 65% of the Internet users are able to view your Web site? Those who can't view your Web site may be those who would have purchased your product or service.
If you notice at the bottom of many pages on the Internet, there are 2 icons. Each of these icons represents the fact that the page on which the icons are placed complies to the W3C standards. You'll find an icon for XHTML and CSS meaning that each page is compliant to the standards set forth for the code in the pages and the CSS that manipulates the pages. If you are in question as to whether or not L.T. Creations, LLC. complies, simply go here W3C Validator and validate any page within this Web site.
How do I comply?
Basically, before 2001, the standard language used in all Web sites was HTML 4.0. The code was all upper case (capitalized) letters. There were rules that allowed one to include things that, nowadays, are unacceptable and cause a browser to refuse to reveal that page with the (now) invalid code. Many developers continue to use parts of this code combined with the new standard "XHTML 1.0 Transitional". This is not acceptable.
- 100% of the code surrounding text must be lower case letters.
- Any "tag" that does not have a closing tag (i.e. img; meta; hr; etc.) must end with " />".
- The <center> tag is no longer acceptable. Use CSS to control content.
- DO NOT depend on your design software to apply 'correct' code or CSS functions. Software was written by people who do not study the Web design standards and, unfortunately, don't know that they are programming the software to write something that's unacceptable.
Learn Current Standards
Design standards have had periodic changes over the years. But most of the code used in XHTML programming remains the same. Most standards have been in existence for eight years or longer. If you use a software program that inputs all or most of your code for you, do NOT assume that your program is in compliance with design standards. If you 'hand code' your pages using something like "Notepad" (as does L.T. Creations, LLC - something most Web engineers find next to impossible) your work will be faster and you will learn more because you are not allowing software to provide what its developers felt (at the time of the software release) that they followed "enough" of the rules and regulation. Let's review some of the standards.
- When creating special characters (i.e. space -   is correct, not With the update of browsers that character may be confused with something else and not render your space correctly, thus throwing off your entire design. Update yourself - perhaps purchase an HTML Reference book because the above 'new' code has been in existence since 1999.)
- Any tag that does not have both a beginning tag and an ending tag must have a "delimiter"
- (i.e. <img src="images/myface.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="My Face" />). Note the ending forward slash before the greater than symbol. This is used because the image tag does not have an opening and closing tag. The same is true with all meta tags - they must end with the forward slash before the greater than symbol.
- All image references must have the "alt" tag included.
- This is not just good housekeeping but part of search engine optimization in addition to compliance with handicapped visitors.
- The "p" tag should only be used to define a pargraph of text.
- Using the "p" tag as a spacer is just plain lazy. With the plethora of methods available within CSS there is no reason to place a "p" tag as a spacer.
- The "p" tag must include both the opening and closing tags.
- <p></p>
- Lists must lie outside the "p" tag. You can not place a list (such as this one) within the confines of a paragraph.
- Placing a "p" 'inside' of another "p" is not acceptable.
- Keep additional scripts (i.e. JavaScript) out of the XHTML and 'call' the script from an "external" script. This keeps the page calling the script compliant since many scripts are not in themselves compliant. This also allows the search engine 'bots' to find your content higher in the page - an SEO compliance.
Standards cont.
To list here all of the standards by which a good developer will code would be pointless because there is a much faster and easier method to both learn and know that your code complies/validates. You have 2 easy methods. One, use this link W3C Marup Validation Service. It's free fast, and will explain on what line of your page you have an error and why. Simply correct that error and re-validate the page again. If there are further errors, correct them and continue to validate until you see the "Congratulations..." message appear. The second method? Have L.T. Creations, LLC. test, validate and make the necessary edits for you. Contact us today to have your pages validate and comply so that you are certain everybody can view the pages of your site as you intended.
What if you don't follow these guidelines? What if you simply design and code the pages of a Web site without regard for the various browsers and computer operating systems? There are a number of browsers being used on the Internet nowadays and each has its own quirks as to how it reads the code in Web site pages. Writing for all of them is not easy. But if you design using only 'one' browser you are guaranteed that there will be other browsers that can not render the page(s) as intended. The pages of L.T. Creations, LLC. look the same in each of the most popular browsers because we follow the W3C Consortium Web design standards, and we take the time to review our work in all the popular browsers. Additionally, our CSS also conforms to the W3C rules, and, is designed with whatever each various browser needs to render content correctly without using "hacks" as are prominently suggested on the Internet. If you know how to write "correct" CSS code you do not need to "hack" anything.
The Easy Answer...
If you want to insure that your site - or just a new portion of your site - complies to all the W3C recommendations and validates, contact L.T. Creations, LLC. and have us perform the tests and edits for you. We can do in only a few minutes what it may take you several hours, or perhaps even days.
If you or the development company who worked on your project had total disregard for the standards, you could be looked over in the search engines, by-passed by prospective buyers, lose what rank or search engine results you had, and your profits from your Web site will decrease. Why take that chance? Comply with the standards and know that your Web site is viewable by the maximum number of people possible.
Will compliance guarantee that all people with any operating system or browser can view your pages as intended? No. Unfortunately, until the manufacturers of browsers and operating systems also adopt the standards of the W3C there will always be a small percentage of visitors that will not be able to view your pages as you intended - even with compliance to the standards. Howver...if you "do" comply and you validate your document(s), you are guaranteed that any issue that may arise or complaint about your page(s) that are unavailable will not be a result of incorrect code. You should be confident to say that the problem lies in the browser or computer used to review your page(s).
How all visitors see the same
Using fully compliant XHTML and CSS, validating both the XHTML and CSS with the validator links found in this page for each of your documents, 99% of the work is done. Review your work in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera. When you see issues/problems, and you will, you have to trust that your codes is correct - so don't change the page code. You "do" want to make minor changes to your CSS. Because...each browser uses its own 'engine' to make it work. This means that the developers of each browser have different ideas of how to interpret the validated code you have created. Once you have validated everything, return to your CSS when you find that 'something' doesn't look right or is not rendering as you inteded in one of the browsers.