If you work in the web and you have yet to hear about web standards, you have probably been hiding under a tabled rock for a good few years. It is agreed that in principle using web standards is a good thing. So, nothing new. Thing is, there are many issues that come up when you follow the only doing standards rules. The problem also comes to play if you are dealing with a client that wants to use third party linking or content that simply is so from validation it is in a different orbit. It might be deep links from affiliate sites or just some other including that they want.
Despite the design world having been full of the standards preaching for a long time, the simple fact is that a large percentage of the world simply do not know and as a result even care about web standards. There are masses of companies producing third party content and applications that wouldn’t know validation if it bit them on the arse, came around for tea and even showed them it’s birth certificate. Yes, the majority of time you can as the designer and developer choose to not use them and generally there are some great alternatives. What if the project depends on them though and it’s a case of not taking the project or making the valid code your produce invalid? I can hear some serious soap box reaching for by professionals who wouldn’t lower their ethics or standards to participate in such a travesty of standardisation. Others will argue that you need to pay the bills and therefore ethics are fine if you’re on a committee or don’t fancy eating anything apart from your moral high ground. It isn’t that clear cut in my mind though.
I have had this instance lately and in the past I had brought out my soap box, stood on it, waggled a finger whilst proclaiming such project heretics and sending them away with an entire bee hive in their bonnet. This time, it was different for me. I am not sure if it’s age that gave me the perspective or the fact that this time around in freelance I am not living in an area where websites fall out of the sky and I now respect every project a whole lot more along with the clients that come to me. After thinking for a while and trying to find an alternative I found there was none. This is a repeat client and therefore I didn’t want to just treat them with the standards contempt stick. One thing that came across to me was that was it really doing any good throwing this client away and proclaiming their project doomed to the evil realm of no validation? Surely, there must be another way to view this situation.
As I was thinking about it the issue of “who owns the content of the website” came to mind. Of course, this is the client and it’s relatively a simple professional rule. I have worked on projects in the past as just the designer or developer and been faced both ends (erm well you know what I mean) by something that didn’t validate. It’s not the client’s fault when it comes down to it. We don’t live in a utopia where everyone knows about it and all third party content producers such as deep linking validate. A client would rightly look at you perplexed if you end up doing the standards dance again, as you’ve probably already done it frequently. Is it the designers right to actually dictate the content for the site along with the structure and look?
In an ideal world we would all have clients beating down our inboxes with gorgeous validating projects that would launch on the web to a fanfare played by web cherubs as it is such a grand example of web creation. Most web designers and developers unfortunately live in the real world where client’s have less glorious subjects. That only takes care of the notion and idea up until the launching though. Say you have this great cherub producing website, it launches, it lives, it walks and it does a great booty shake on the side. Time changes and so does the content of the site, you don’t have control as you’ve handed it over. So, what happens then to your designer ego? Do you write a clause in your contracts that states for the entire life the client can never do anything to the site? Good luck on getting that one past clients.
It came to a point during my debating about this project that there was one aspect I was failing to think about. I don’t have control over these third party links and as a result of this the project would become invalid. However, by actually doing this project, creating the skeleton and as making sure that everything I did was valid, wasn’t I actually doing something better than just walking away and leaving this client to have to go somewhere else. Yes, I need the money – this wasn’t about that as if need be I could do another project to make it up. Yes, this was a repeat client – but shouldn’t all clients get treated as repeat or potential repeat clients? I am not trying to justify my lapse in ethics – there hasn’t been one. I am not producing the invalid code and I have contacted the providers to see what they can offer, although I am doubtful. Way I see it, I am doing what I can do and dealing with each project. The client has threw me moved away completely from table based no standard validating designs. I am slowly being commissioned to roll out new versions of this client’s entire portfolio – something that is like gold dust to any freelancer and any standards based web designer or developer.
The upshot is that you can’t control the content or site once it is launched. The same applies for third party linking or applications a client may choose or need for their project. As a client you can advise the best you can, ultimately they want it done and will go somewhere to have it made. I have in this case suggested ways of moving off the deep linking that is not valid and that will be something that is done once the project is bringing revenue. This is the decision I came to and others would have done differently. The main point is the next time you are faced with this situation, how about thinking of alternatives to just throwing the project and client away. There is always some way, you can at worst keep your ethics in check and do the best you can with your end. There is always a queue of non validating or caring about standards website designers and developers lining up behind you. The other point is really that the battle of web standards hasn’t been won by a long way. Until third party links and other application providers produce code that is valid, there will always be project that will be done without standardisation. This isn’t saying that there is no hope, it’s about keeping up with the spreading of the message and occasional bashing over the head with the standards stick. You can prove why standards are good, but can you provide an alternative that does the job for the client? If you can’t should you throw the project out or find a compromise – yes you can compromise it’s never black and white.
The main problem with web standards and clients is a complete lack of understanding and education within the business sector. If a client (or in my case an employer) cannot see a specific ROI – whether that be time or money, they do not really care how quick and dirty a site is – so long as it is done – usually as fast as humanly possible. In my case I have the additional problem of an employer who has some basic knowledge of web (if you call using GoLive web knowledge) – which automatically leads him to assume that he know better than me. I recently created the company’s first xhtml/css website. I then was off sick for a week and came back to find that my boss had rewritten the website using tables and non valid html, because he had looked at the code and I quote ‘and it looked different to all of the others sites,’ and so assumed it was faulty (quite apart from the fact that the page loaded about 10 times faster than its nested table equivalent.) In the end unless an employer/client actually SEES and UNDERSTANDS the benefits (and yes I have explained them until I am blue in the face and I have waved a copy of PAS 78 around)there will still be corporate websites produced with do not validate, and are not accessible. Business needs to have some kind of incentive, or indeed, penalty, imposed to encourage use of valid code, to encourage accessibility, and to discourage use of GoLive in the workplace…
You make a good point. Most of the third party are of course business orientated – infact all I can think of are. So, your point about change through penalty is a valid one. It is sort of the next front I think with standards. The people making the sites really know about it now, unless they have been under a rock – I am not talking about the ‘webmaster’ with a copy of golive :). So, the next battle really is to get the people to realise that without there are penalty’s – be that performance or be that monetry. Could we have a non-validating tax… bring more money in than any other tax in the UK. This is not a realistic option, but hey it’s a nice thought.
if google has some rules (give high scores) and ranks web standard compliance websites better on their SERPs, it’d be nice :)
users don’t care about the code