The Benefits of Web Standards

There are plenty of reasons why you should follow Web standards when you build your sites. Businesses , developers , and users all stand to gain from standards-complaint practices . Here are a few of the most compelling reasons why all of the websites you build should be standards-complaint:

Web standards help developers by

Decreasing development time. You’ll avoid redundant code such as <font> by controlling the entire design with external CSS files.
Decreasing maintenance time. Changes in one external CSS file can affect the entire site.
Increasing design capabilities. There are a number of advanced design features that CSS is capable of but old school HTML formatting is not.
Creating cleaner code. XHTML that separates formatting, structure, and behavior is much easier to read and maintain.
Empowering delivery of the same XHTML content in many formats by using separate style sheets. One XHTML document can be styled for screen, handheld, and print display.
Creating more stable code. Standards complaint code is likely to work in future version of browsers, and will actually work in legacy browsers as well.

Web standards help businesses by

Saving money on development costs. Website development costs can be cut dramatically by decreasing the amount of time it takes developers to build site.
Saving money on server bandwidth costs. Because structure, formatting, and behavior are kept separate on standards-complaint sites, the CSS and Java Script will only need to be downloaded once when the user loads the first page that links to them.
Helping developers meet deadlines. When developers can build and maintain sites efficiently they are more likely to meet tight deadlines.

Web standards help users by;

Speeding up the load times. Externalized CSS and Java Script only load once rather than every time a page is loaded.
Improving accessibility. Disabled users and users on alternate devices will appreciate equal access to Web content.

Developers, businesses , and users all reap the benefits of Web Standards , but there is one even more compelling reason to make the change: Web standards can help optimize your site for search engines and can generate more traffic on your site. Poorly constructed and legacy code can cause problems for search engines when indexing your site.

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