Re: Designers/web developer needs

Chris Hubick wrote:

> I mean...the problem is the kinda thing we all talk about in theoretical
> terms...but I don't know of anywhere you can really /show/ people the
> results.

An excellent point, Chris.

It was always much easier to say "if you code like this, it will work in 
both IE4 and NS4". Developers could try it out and see results. What's 
more everyone back then knew numerous other folk who had a different 
browser preference to themselves, so the benefits were obvious.

When trying to evangelize web standards, the benefits are not always so 
apparent. How many people personally know someone who browses the web 
with a Braille reader? How many people even use their darn PDA for 
browsing the web? I know I only use my to check sites I've built.

As far as the forward compatibility benefits go, not that many every-day 
developers have been around on the web as long as some of us, and maybe 
haven't been put in the position of dealing with legacy pain-in-the-butt 
systems - they simply can't imagine the immense value in forward 
compatibility. Who can blame them? The rest of web culture tells them to 
live for the moment. (you're only ever a quick FTP command away from 
correcting your mistakes, so why worry?).

So how the heck to we make the benefits of standards-based markup/code 
real to the worker ants on the ground?

-- 
drew mclellan

WaSP dreamweaver task force
http://www.webstandards.org/

team macromedia volunteer
http://www.macromedia.com/go/team

Received on Tuesday, 9 July 2002 17:53:58 UTC