The Importance of Designing with Web Standards

Every time I see the title beginning 'The Importance of...." I always think of The Importance of Being Earnest - a literary classic. In this new medium, of web design, it is fundamental that good practices be followed if you want to set yourself apart from the weekend web designers.

As a result, we can elevate the craft further. Not everyone has good style and taste although we all believe that we do. This is clear whenever you go to a golf tournament. No, plaid and argyle does not bode well with stripes and floral prints at the same time. Similarly, relying on one style in web design is not going to offer you a long career.

In the early stages of rich websites, the introduction of frames allowed for useful nuggets of information to be in part of a page while the detail was in the main body. Today when you see a page that is still relying on frames, it screams update me now before I become even more obsolete than I am. This is a direct reflection on the company. Without meaning to do so, it is possible to make a business appear behind the times and in a worse case scenario, not a company one would want to do business with in the future.

We are long past the days when using Microsoft Word, Powerpoint or Front Page and saving the file as an HTML file/web page are adequate to stimulate consumers. Software Engineer and design guru John Allsopp challenges Web Designers - professional and amateur - to continually update their skills. His recent work Developing With Web Standards encourages designers to go beyond the safe skill set, update their skills and design with things other than by using fonts and tables to convey points. This book is paired with Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing with Web Standards and together helps a designer work with the better standards of today using CSS, HTML and other web standards. The outcome is that the user will be able to produce rich websites that are able to remain relevant versus current standards. Why trust these guys? Experience and expertise in the areas which have given them remarkable 'street cred' in the development world.

To be a good designer today, you need to have a mastery of HTML, CSS and be working on your skills that will be usable in the future such as using HTML 5. But at the same time, you will have to be flexible and cognizant of the next trends - often before it happens. After all, 5 years ago, would you have expected businesses to be using Twitter and FaceBook to garner customers? It was an underground trend that has gone beyond mainstream.

What will continue to evolve as consumers is our appetite for websites and mobile applications that are eye candy and yet through a call to action, stimulate the user and engage them in a behavior. There are so many now, that we tend to have ADD jumping from one to another as simply as changing the channels on a television. Grabbing the users' attention, engaging them and creating a compelling call to action that results in an action will deliver profits and desired results for businesses. That can be a call to action that results in a sale - generating profits for a business or a call to action which results in a activist role such as supporting a cause or non profit charity.

Our ability as developers depends on our skills being continually updated and our abilities to identify key marketing trends in the web and mobile environments. The better we do this, the more successful we will be.

More later...ch