Specifically the idea of them building client side code which complies with standards such as XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS 2 (probably the two most commonly followed ones at the moment) and, dare I suggest, WCAG 1.0 (Accessibility).

Whereas most good books (such as Bulletproof Web Design and so on) not only recommend that standards are followed but also give lots of tips on how to do it, most developers I’ve ever worked with see standards compliance as another overhead, in the same bucket as doing their timesheets and attending team meetings. The code would work just fine without them, no one will notice if they didn’t do it and what value does it really add. Etc.

I can see why they might think this way.

There are loads of examples of high profile, hugely popular commercial sites that are clearly not standards compliant – even at the technical code level, as any simple check using the W3C Validator will show. It doesn’t appear to have harmed their search engine rankings or affected their ability to display correctly in various browsers. (Though the additional costs of making such “non-standard” compliant sites achieve this must be enormous.)

And almost all of them gets away with it. Though now and then, some site owners are prosecuted the cases are sadly few. Naturally, this therefore strengthens the case for the non-standards compliance school. If the big guys don’t comply and they don’t suffer as a result, why should anyone else bother.

Yet standards compliance is so simple to achieve and really doesn’t take much more time to do, so it shouldn’t be seen as such a burden. It basically amounts to producing clean, tidy and efficient code and using html properly – ie. semantically – which is what any good developer should surely be striving to do. I often use the analogy of a journalist complaining if they are asked to spellcheck their stories – surely it should be something that they do as a matter of course in the quest for quality.

Accessibility is a little different. Accessibility does require going that extra bit further, tagging up titles, using tabs and hot-keys to aid navigation, providing non-javascript versions of key content if you’ve also used javascript for it and so on. Being standards compliant takes you a long way to having an accessible site, but not completely.

But even then, it really doesn’t take too much more effort. And there are loads of tools to help check for compliance. I discovered a very good one recently – Total Validator. You can use it to check your code against the various html standards at the same time as you test for code-based (as opposed to content-based) accessibility compliance.

At the end of the day, whether its a legal requirement or not, it makes good sense to produce neat, clean standards-compliant code. It loads faster, works across more devices, is easier to maintain and ultimately better for users.

There’s really no excuse not to do it.

Why? Because they are crucial to driving forward their adoption.

Peter Kim recently did some research into Social Media Predictions for 2009 – here is his paper if you want to have a browse. Interestingly, there was little mention of these 3 areas but probably because it was more of a marketing and social paper than a technical “how to” guide.

But these areas are essential to delivering some of the changes predicted in that paper.

Firstly, html 5.

Though the standard is still in development, quite a bit of information has already been released about it. This article provides an excellent snapshot of what we can hopefully expect to see when the standard is finally delivered – and more importantly, supported by all browsers.

The new set of elements and attributes should go a long way to encouraging developers to produce more semantic, better structured html. And that’s essential for social media, mashups, RSS, enabling user-generated content on pages, providing better searchable blog entries and so on.

Three examples: HTML5 introduces a range of “structure” elements such as <footer>, <nav> and <aside>. This will greatly help developers mark up the content of their pages more accurately for use by search engines, content aggregators and social media tools.

Second example: HTML5 provides various elements for developers to use in place of the ubiquitous <object> element. New elements such as <video> and <audio> will enable developers to more accurately tag content so it can be more easily consumed by other sites, tools and so on.

I also read somewhere – though I can’t see it in the current draft standard – that an element will be provided to enable developers to mark up some content sections as being editable by users. If so, this should result in the explosion of user-generated content on all sorts of pages – basically, “instant” wiki pages. And potentially I guess make it possible for users to narrow searches by “user-generated” content.

Moving on to microformats. Though some may perhaps be replaced by new html 5 elements, microformats give developers the option to provide greater granularity when marking up their content.

This is all good stuff when it comes to making content more searchable and better able to be shared. Many people are probably already familiar with the geo tag for marking up location details of content so that it can be displayed for example of location-aware devices.

You can see some microformats in action if you install the Operator Firefox extension and look at any wordpress-driven blog including this one through the firefox browser. WordPress comes with the microformat rel-tag inbuilt so that whenever you add a post to a category, this microformat tag is populated.

If you’ve got the extension enabled, when looking at this post have a look at the toolbar and you will see “tagspaces” highlighted. Look at the drop-down list and you will see a list of sites that consume the tags on this post and let you search by them.

Microformats have huge potential for social media, next generation search and content sharing – once they become more widely adopted.

And finally, the 3rd new friend – next generation search.

As .net predicts in this month’s issue, “google’s 10 blue links will soon be history”. This site gives examples of new, more relevant ways of searching.

You know, the types who’ll sell you a “custom” website for £4k (5 pages only, template-based, and SEO advice extra, of course).

It made me think of my dad and how he goes bananas when I tell him how much it costs to service my car, and what they actually do for it. “£xx for an oil change!”  and so on. But he knows a thing or two about cars – don’t most dads??

But cars are as alien to me as the web is to him. I’m sure he’d think £4k for a website was a bargain. Even £10k.

And there lies the problem when it comes to these vendors. If you don’t know enough – just enough – about what service they are actually offering you, how much work they will do, how can you know whether you’re being ripped off or not. How would you know whether you are paying for something that is very difficult, or something that is quite straightforward (and therefore really shouldn’t cost as much).

So I thought about how someone could become better informed about the web. Not enough to be a developer but enough to know when you’re being taken for a ride.

In my view, its simple. Make use of all the free tools out there and build yourself a basic web site.

For example:

• get yourself a free web editing program, some cheap web space and a couple of good books (Bulletproof Web Design, for example), and create a simple web site. It doesn’t really matter what it’s about. The aim of this is to get an idea of standards-based design, html and css.
• Before starting, spend a little time doing the excellent free tutorials about html and css on w3cschools first
• Once you’ve created your site, upload it to your web space, stand back, be proud and have a cup of tea!

• then, check your site’s code by running your site’s live pages through the w3c markup validation service. This is a great way to learn more about coding and how to debug your site, which makes it work better across different browsers, load faster and be easier to update.

• then start exploring the world of plug-ins available for your site, starting with something simple such as a google adsense or an amazon affiliate plugin. (And maybe make some money

• while you’re at it, include some code from google analytics

By the end of all that, you’ll know a little about how easy it is to build a simple web site.

And when it all boils down, a simple site isn’t really that much different to how big CMS systems work. They still use css for design layout, they still use html / xhtml for content rendering, they still require metadata to be added to each page (keywords etc, which are important for SEO) and they still use javascript (and sometimes also iframes) for inserting plug-ins and pulling content through etc.

So you’ll also know at a basic level about how CMS systems work at presentation layer level.

(They also use design templates, content wizards, user permissions, application script calls and so on but the fundamentals of css, xhtml and javascript remain.)

You’ll still be a long way from being an expert but hopefully you’ll feel more informed about just how “difficult” some of this web stuff really is.

The web equivalent to being able to change your car’s oil yourself or at least know if you’re being ripped off!