RE: Right Tools RE: Promotion of XHTML

Don't you think it is really up to us, designers and developers who have
been converted, to preach to our colleagues and educate the next
generation of developers?

++++++

Yes, it is up to us the "enlightened" to promote and educate the next,
and indeed current, generation of developers (I swear that they're
getting sick of me talking about validation and accessibility at work at
work).

I suppose it comes down to whether the W3C want to be seen as just a
standards organisation who solely write the standards for the WWW and
who rely on third parties such as WaSP to work with companies like
Macromedia. Or do they want to actively work with and get their name on
such high profile products?  For example, HTML Tidy has that great "if
you want to learn more about standards...." line when you run it (at
least in TopStyle it does - it's the only place I've used it).  Now, if
that was included in Dreamweaver MX more people would be aware of
exactly why they are bothering to validate.  They would see that kind of
message every time which would hopefully help bring the concept of XHTML
/ standards home to people.

If the W3C just want to write the standards and rely on evangalism to
spread the message then, IMHO, there's a limited amount that they can
expect in return.  It's relying on the passion and dedication of people
who know and understand the reasons why it's important to write XHTML.
But apart from giving us badges to put on our sites, there's not a huge
amount we can do to really reach the masses.  Sure, we can publsih
articles online about this very subject, but who apart from the
"nerdly-inclined" will read them?

The ISO is an organisation that is known globally.  When I was a kid
there used to be "kite marks" engraved onto car windows showing that the
glass met a certain standard.  Every time I walked past a car, I'd check
for a kite mark and the things were everywhere.  That's what we need for
the W3C logo and message(s) - but not just on sites; it needs to be in
software packages and in the manuals that come with them.  It needs to
be ubiquitous with the Web.

Francis

Received on Wednesday, 1 January 2003 14:28:17 UTC