If you want to spread the word about standards-compliant XHTML, separation of content from presentation, accessibility, and so on, first you have to make sure that the people you’re trying to convince understand exactly what it is that you’re talking about. Otherwise you may be surprised to find that you’ve convinced them of something very different than what you were going for. You may even have done a fantastic job of selling them on the polar opposite of the real message.
When you say “web standards,” most people don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If they do know what you mean, then they’re probably on board with web standards already, which means you’re just preaching to the choir. Get them on your team and spread the word - but do it in a way that makes sense to people outside your little cabal.
Overheard at a meeting recently:
Guy #1: We’re trying to focus on web standards a lot more on our sites, so we need to make sure there’s an option for users who don’t have Flash.
Guy #2: Flash is so prevalent at this point! 99% of people have it installed! It is a standard.
See, when people who aren’t W3C cheerleaders hear the word “standards,” they think it means “what everyone uses” or “what most people use.” So, since Internet Explorer is still the most widely used browser (though its popularity is plummeting), does that make it a “web standard?” Serious web developers will either laugh uncontrollably or be driven into a fury by such a suggestion.
So, fellow web standards advocates, continue fighting the good fight, but make sure you provide definitions, facts, and lots of examples before dragging your ill-informed co-workers kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
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2 Responses to "But pop-up windows are a web standard!"
Don’t we all???
I agree with that wholeheartedly.
On a tangent, though, Flash isn’t that ubiquitous. We recently ran into some serious problems at work when our web designer serially constructed Flash interfaces from the ground up for three or four sites. Serious, serious portability, rendering consistency, and plug-in bug issues, and not just from people running IE4 on Win95.