Nonprofit Expressions

Internet Explorer version 8 just went into Beta, and in a stunning announcement from Microsoft it’s time to get your website up to standards.

As a web designer I already urge people to use a standards compliant browser like Firefox. By doing so not only will you get to see the web the way it is meant to be, but you will help push companies like Microsoft (who up until now ignored standards almost completely) into using standards in new browsers.

Standards compliance has been an issue on the web for a long time. For the most part, the design and development community comes up with standards we would like to see the browser creators, like Mozilla, Safari, and Microsoft, use in new releases. The reason is to create an internet that does not require 3 or 4 versions of websites to work on all the different browsers. Many of us who have been working on the web for the last decade can remember the days when we had to have two versions of websites. One version for Netscape and another for Internet Explorer. Having two different website versions is a very expensive concept, and it is for this reason many companies pushed for a standard all browsers could use.

Until now, Microsoft has had most of the browser market, and has had no reason to even care about standards. This has made every web designer’s job harder. We have to create pages that are standards-compliant, and then come up with hacks to make the sites work right in Internet Explorer (what a dumb way of doing things…it’s reasons like this that many tech-savvy people hate Microsoft).

Microsoft is feeling the pressure as 28% of the internet choosing to see the web the way it was meant to be (in Firefox). So in Internet Explorer 8 they are going to implement standards compliance (at least to some degree). This is a great time to be in web design, as this will allow for a better internet as a whole. The problem was that Microsoft was going to make the new version 8 browser behave in the same way as version 7 unless designers use special code to tell the browser to behave the right standards-compliant way. So what then is the point of having a standards-compliant browser if it will not read websites that way naturally? This has been the complaint of designers the globe over.

That is why it is so great to see they reversed their decision. The new browser will indeed be more standards-compliant!

What this means to your site

If you have a highly non-standards compliant website (and a designer you should fire) that website might break in Internet Explorer 8. Yes you read that right, if your code is not up to snuff, your site might not work right in the new browser. This can be a big problem for those with older sites, or newer ones that were not built well.

So if you are considering a re-design you should keep standards in mind. It will not be long before standards-compliant browsers are the norm, and badly designed code won’t work. If you know for a fact that your site is not standards compliant, you don’t have to get a re-design going tomorrow. Internet Explorer 8 is only in Beta and it will be months or years before it becomes the norm on the Internet. But that day is coming, and its just one more good reason to get your standards up to snuff.

If you are not sure if your website is standards complaint you can contact me, and our staff will do a “site report card” on your website. Part of our analysis includes standards compliance!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 9:37 am and is filed under General, Improving your website, Standards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.