Standards are hot again!

.. but to me they remained cool

With outspoken criticism from many in various forums and blogs on the use of web standards and XHTML and CSS the discussion never seems to cease. If I bluntly summarize the critics I think they say “Why use difficult things like XHTML and CSS? It's just too difficult for me to understand and I can get the same result by using twenty nested tables and a few spacer GIFs!” OK, as we say in Dutch this may be a little “short through the corner”, but still, from where I stand it's close to reality.

CSS & web standards illiterates

Why use difficult things like XHTML and CSS? It's just too difficult for me to understand and I can get the same result by using twenty nested tables and a few spacer GIFs!

Recent buzz

Recently there has been some buzz around standards that make them hot again. Eric Meyer has produced three clear articles with suggestion on improving the W3C. Over on Vitamin an article explains why standards still matter and what we (the good people) can do to promote the use of standards. And just today A List Apart added another good entry in this arena.

These articles and all the resulting comments show that standards are still hot (and never really cooled down) and that standard conscious web designers are a growing and active community. And that in the near future standard compliant web sites might become the standard.

Soooo ...

If you are still using the old table based design and don't care for document types and closing all tags and are of the opinion that if Internet Explorer shows it right it must be right then maybe it is becoming that you should start worrying if you shouldn't learn to build websites the proper way. It is difficult at first. It was to all of us. But doing the right thing never hurt anyone.

If you don't care and you don't want top change. Well, just simply fade away. Goodbye to all you spacer GIF loving people.

Tags:

• standards
• hot
• web
• cool