Web Site Coding Standards
Unveiled in 2004, this FORTH, Inc. web site re-design by
External Design
is built on a simpler layout with less code overhead than the older site, thanks to the adoption
by the major browser manufacturers of web standards.
In addition to improved navigation and utility, we rebuilt the site to better comply with standards
set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The site relies heavily on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for layout and design details, and
the markup language that describes the content of these pages adheres closely, in most cases, to transitional
Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) rules.
For this site, the adoption of standards has lightened the byte-load (of the pages we sampled)
by about one-third to one-half. Client-side executable code has fewer forks. And we hope you agree, after a brief
adjustment period, that both navigation and comprehension are easier now.
The Standards
CSS is a mechanism for defining the style and presentation
(e.g., the fonts, colors, margins, and borders) of web documents. It was formalized as a W3C recommendation
in 1996, but faced resistance from developers and site owners because of poor support for it in
the web browsers of that time. Newer, standards-compliant browsers provide a more consistent platform
for CSS.
XHTML, the next version of HTML, incorporates the power and flexibility of XML (Extensible Markup Language)
and is designed to allow web pages to be displayed on a range of browser platforms,
including mobile phones, PDAs, televisions and specialized browser clients such as those used by the
visually and physically impaired.
Through the use of CSS, web content can be rendered differently for each device according
to its inherent capabilities. (As a minor example, some pages of this site do not display
navigational devices and certain other web-specific content when printed in hard copy.) This site does
not yet make full use of alternate media in its CSS, but adoption of these web coding standards makes it more
likely to be achieved with minimal effort when conditions call for it.
Rationale
Complex HTML workarounds are still used by many web sites to control columns and margins around
blocks of text and images. Such markup tags may inhibit the accessibility of the content on existing and
forthcoming devices other than web browsers. They also create denser code that is more difficult to develop
and to maintain.
The XHTML and CSS standards improve accessibility and enable more-consistent, reliable performance
from web browsers. They streamline the code, reducing bandwidth and improving the developer and user experience.
Protecting Older Browsers
Older browsers did not support CSS, and only recent versions of major browsers support
it well enough to avoid unpredictable layout problems. Rather than preventing older browsers from
seeing standard-compliant material at all, CSS can be effectively hidden from browsers incapable of
displaying the content properly.
The details of this new web site design are only visible in newer, standards-compliant browsers. But
much of our content can still be accessed from every available commercial browser we know of.
Those who continue to use older browsers will see a much simpler site that offers the full content in a
stripped-down design, and with loss or some degree of change to layout and typography.
In a Perfect World…
We would have preferred to keep our site free of workarounds that fix obscure rendering issues
in specific browsers. We admit that this is not entirely the case. The fact remains: past browsers
were not built for the same standards supported by today's browsers. Even recent browsers thought of as
"standards-compliant" carry slight discrepancies. We've done our best to ensure our site renders
as consistently as possible, despite browser differences. We apologize if the content is rendered
in a way that somehow makes it inaccessible in your particular configuration and circumstances.
To report significant bugs with our new design or to send other feedback, please use our
contact form or send e-mail to
webmaster@forth.com.
