[Sigia-l] RE: Web Standards and I.A.s

[Thomas Vander Wal]

You may say I am involved in Web Standards as I am on the WaSP Steering
Committee and have written guidelines for implementing Web Standards on
various client sites over the past four years.

Web Standards should change an IA's job as it allows for adding a semantic
layer to the mark-up.  I have been using the initial, very rough wireframes,
as the basis for setting the site's initial semantic mark-up.  I have the
developers I work with use the content structures in the wireframes as their
guides for building the CSS.

One fallacy with Web Standards is having to use CSS to be a valid site.
There are many valid reasons for using some simple frames for layout.  One
reason is your users are still using older browsers or using devices that do
not render CSS layouts properly.  Using the named content elements in the
attributes of the tags as *id*s you can blow away the tables at a later date
and replace the table tags with dive tags using the same *id* and have a
table-less CSS layout.  A well written script and a well structured site can
do wonders.

Fallacy two, browsers that do not render presentation of CSS layout properly
will still have all the information and the site is still usable.  This is
only partly correct.  All the information is there, but the users may not
recognize the site and leave immediately.  Presentation and consistency is
very important.  When we did user testing on the *degraded* site
presentation we asked users if it was the same site as what they had
previously seen.  Seven of the eight we tested said it was a different site
and clicked away.  All the content was the same and the images still
displayed, but it was not enough for the users to recognize.

As always test with actual users and get to know your users well.

Web Standards are also a great intermediary step toward a content management
system as it pushes you to think about content areas and the various types
of content and content objects that are one each page.  Whether, your site
validates to Web Standards (W3C) or not, the site should be using the proper
structure for each content type.  CSS can overwrite the presentation
elements that are defaults in the browsers.  Having the proper structure
done with tagging will greatly help understand the structure of the
information on each page.  The practice that most IAs go through to prepare
for a CMS is quite similar to what developers go through when building
standards compliant sites.

All the best,
Thomas

-- Sorry, would have responded earlier today, but I do not have e-mail
access at work.

On 4/6/04 9:25 AM, "O'Neill, Brian" <Brian.O'Neill at FMR.COM> wrote:

> Hi
> 
> I was just curious if any of the I.A.s on the list here have been
> involved with web standards-based design implementations?
> 
>> Has this affected your job?
>> If so, how were you involved in the design process?
>> Are you perhaps responsible for markup quality and the semantic angle
> of web standards?
> 
> The last posting with this topic was back in  June '03 so I thought I
> would ask. I am new to the list too (Welcome me!)