The Home of the Fez Monkey

Web design and development is all about Web Standards. The separation of structure, presentation and behaviour is a vital part of this.

HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 are the current Web Standards for markup, with CSS 2.1 as the standard for presentation.

Design for the Web is a combination of graphic design, information archtecture, usability and accessibilty principles.

Interactivity is achieved with Javascript. It is important for scripted functions to degrade gracefully for those not using Javascript.

Web Standards

By adhering to Web Standards sites benefit from leaner, more manageable code, better accessibility, better SEO performance and future browser compatibility.

So what?

Who cares about Web Standards? If it looks cool in Firefox, what's the problem? Well, the Fez Monkey says

it's a good idea to use W3C Standards, so don't put CSS and Javascript code inline in your HTML

... and you don't want to cross the Fez Monkey, do ya? Punk?

What about Flash?

Steve Jobs hates Flash, coz he can't make any money out of it. Adobe reckons that the Web should be “open”. But the Fez Monkey sez they're both right. Flash is not a Web Standard and its use should be limited to those things that HTML5 can't do. But that's no reason to prevent users from having the option of viewing Flash content.

Flash is not a Web Standard, HTML5 soon will be

Get the picture?

But IE wrecks my designs!

Agreed, IE should be outlawed, but until then it's best to employ the principles of progressive enhancement. In the words of the Fez Monkey ...

Make it work and look OK in IE, then add the Web 2.0 goodness for those with real browsers.

Hallelujah!

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