ASP.net reality check

ASP.net & designing with web standards (Zeldman aloud #3)

I'll try and finish the introductory section all in one shot. Not too many ASP.net stuff here. Good read nevertheless!

Ending the Cycle of Obsolescence

• Loved this phrase:short-sighted proprietary "solutions" that contain the seeds of their own obsolescence.
• Web standards are not for purists or theorists, but rather for pragmatic people who want to do the job only once.

What is the W3C?

• Founded in 1994, creates specifications and guidelines.
• Some of these guidelines, which are officialy referred to as "recommendations" by the W3C, have been relabeled as "web standards" by the Web Standards Project.

What is forward compatibility?

• Zeldman defines it as write your site today following standards, and see it run seamlessly on current and future versions of browsers, no matter the platform. Especially as browsers become increasingly standards-compliiant.
• Standards: XML and XHTML for markup, CSS for presentation, DOM for the object model and ECMAScript for behavior.
• Standards-compliant browsers: browsers that can read and correctly interpret documents written in these languages.
• No browser is 100% accurate in that respect. What is more, standards are complex, sometimes resulting in ambiguity when combined in complex scenarios.
• Most browsers released after the year 2000 comply with standards, at least to a basic extent.

No rules, no dogma

• Standards-compliance is not a dogmatic, all-or-nothing issue.
• In areas in which standards-compliance is lousy, good all Jeffrey says we should not be blind dullards. Neither when dealing with scenarios that are vaguely defined by current standards.
• Transition to standards need not be immediate (although it could be if you used Aggiorno ;o): non semantic markup and table-based layouts are not correct, but sometimes are an inevitable evil.
• Same with Flash, Quicktime, and the like. Purists say they shouldn't be used at all, but sometimes they need to be used.
• Lesson of the day: standards are cool, but life is life and you might end up with a non standards site. Don't feel bad about it.

Practice, Not Theory

• Following web standards is not a matter of simply being a purist, but rather a question of diminishing current development costs.
• Not following standards made sense when not all of them where completely defined and/or when browser support was too weak. This is not the case any longer

What Is The Web Standards Project?

• Non-for-profit group of designers and developers that strive to have browser and development tools makers follow guidelines recommended by the W3C.
• Has been influential in making big players, such as Microsoft and Adobe, focus their products towards becoming standards-compatible

Is This Trip Really Necessary?

• The W3C is not very effective at communicating to the general public what standards are and how they are best applied.
• The web's growth was so fast, that literally millons of sites mushroomed before standards were sketched. It's high time we started using them.

Mostly introductory stuff. Haven't found any ASP.net comment to make yet.

Alan - yet another Aggiorno evangelist