Today is 30th November, the third annual Blue Beanie Day! On this day Web designers and Standardistas don blue beanie hats to show their support for accessible, semantic Web content.
The blue beanie theme is a reference to the cover of Jeffrey Zeldman’s industry-changing guidebook from 2003, ‘Designing With Web Standards‘ (Third edition cover shown left).
The Web standards movement has the goal of making Web sites easier to access (for people and machines), easier to manage and update, more stable and ‘futureproof’. It is commonly misinterpreted as trying to standardise Web sites and make them all the same, which really isn’t the case.
I’ve had Web standards at the core of my work for the past four or five years. From a selfish standpoint I can really say it has made my job as a Web designer easier, faster, reliable, efficient and more valuable. Aside from how I benefit, I like to think that my clients get that value in the work I do for them. I also like to think their customers or users, in turn, enjoy the fact that sites do what they expect them to do, and just work properly.
Why Web standards are good for you
If you’re reading this as someone who doesn’t design Web sites—maybe someone who owns/manages a site, or sometimes has to buy Web design services—you might be thinking “what’s the business case for all this”?
Well, you should understand or request Web standards if you want a site and content that:
- is accessible to the greatest amount of visitors as possible
- is understandable by the greatest amount of visitors as possible
- is more usable
- gets better search engine placement
- is easier and quicker to maintain or update
- has a higher resale value (should you have that as an priority)
- works better with other sites
- loads faster in a user’s browser
- is cheaper to host
Further reading
So what are Web standards? I’ll be writing more about them in the coming months as there’s too much cover in one post. For now, though, here’s some useful links to get you started…
First of all, I’d recommend buying and reading DWWD. It’s not just for techies!
For a great primer on Web standards read The Web Standards Project FAQ.
If you use Facebook, attend the Facebook event.
If you want an in-depth look and tutorials the browser makers, Opera, have a great curriculum on Web Standards.