Inhibited Standard Compliance
During my life as a web developer, I’ve been wasting many hours trying comply with web standards while designing websites. Right now, the process looks like this:
1. Designing in html/css2.1 using Bluefish and the Gimp.
2. Continuously testing the site using Firefox.
3. When pleased with the design, checking it using W3C’s html/css-validators.
4. Testing in using Internet Explorer (whenever I get access to it).
5. Being utterly pissed at IE’s lousy support for web standards.
6. Redesigning the site, avoiding IE’s flaws and removing some of the features that didn’t work out. (This is the part that seems to take the longest time)
I can’t help to wonder what the web would be like if web designers didn’t have to be cramped by a certain software companys complete disrespect for standards. It seems to me like a wonderful thing. Maybe IE7 will help out, but the problem is that I have yet to see IE7 in action. That’s quite surprising, considering that I use quite a lot of different computers when I move around in the world. Microsoft seems to have some adoption problems going on…
Anyway, I’m changing my process. I will be designing for web standards and the ones using IE will be served a different design, not that pretty, but working. (And they will get a link to download a decent browser.)
One more thing – please don’t complain about the lack of standards compliance on this blog’s html, I didn’t design it and won’t put the time it takes to redesign it. I have more important projects.
