Article Discussion: W3C Web Standards

The days of “this site is best viewed in...” are over! We shall no longer be discriminated against for using the browser of our choice. Forget tedious template management, and be prepared to save some dollars on bandwidth! The World Wide Web Consortium have come to agreement on the new Web Standards that will allow us to code and maintain our pages with far less effort, all the while resting assured that everyone can see them as we intended.


Read the full article here: W3C Web Standards

Great article! Good to see this stuff getting pushed.

It's worth mentioning that for IE6 to correctly run in standards mode, you have to remove the XML prolog - this part: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"? >. If you don't do this IE6 will run in "quirks mode", making it behave like IE5/5.5, and no-one wants that!

Note that this does not apply to newer, more standards compliant browsers such as FireFox and Opera.

thanks for the note!

If you belive this is the truth, than perhaps you should gain some more experience creating valid pages that are display equally in all browser.


Of course valid coding is mandatory for proper web development. But this is far from enough to create a perfect result. The usage of hacks and "cheats" are still just as important to achive the result you intend. Due to the fact that there are several lousy browser out there, (Read IE) with CSS support from the year 1852, the perfect result could be difficult to achive.


Let us use an example. Padding is treated differently in IE and other browser such as Opera or Mozilla. One browser adds the padding to the set width/height, and the other one creatings padding within the set width/height. This results in different width/height on your element, depending on browser. Of course it is possible to avoid problem using the voice-family selector to force another interpetation in some browsers.


And of course we have the ever so famous border. The same thing happens here, as border is displayed inline elements in some browsers, and outline in others.


All theese examples depends on the mode you force the browser in of course. Quirk mode estrablish one result, and strict another.


Anyway, the point is. Do not blindtrust that your page is perfect just because it is valid. Always test it in different browser, and ensure that every aspect is covered. A lot of people use IE, and therefore heavy usage of CSS2 might create problems you never thought would appear.

I realize that there are quirks, but notice the word 'theoretically'. The point of the article was to explain where we are going, and hopefully we are getting closer. I imagine the next release of IE, with XP sp2 will resolve a number of CSS2 issues

Unfortunately, (unless there's been a recent change) MS has stated that they won't be making any further changes to the core IE engine, until Longhorn is released. So all our box model woes (among others) will continue for many more years.

well in that case, FireFox all the way!!!

In theory a lot of things work, but unfortunally that does not always apply to everyone outside of the paper.

As stumpy said, IE has been released for the last time for now. So let us rather support frankcows statement and hope everyone open their eyes for firefox.