<blockquote>Welcome to our website; unless of course you're blind, dyslexic, using a screen reader, magnification software, text-based browser, webTV, cell phone, or PDA, running Linux, Unix, BEos, Solaris, OS2 or FreeBSD, or haven't updated your browser in the last year or so. You're not important to us. </blockquote>

Is that a message you'd proudly display on your company homepage? The truth is, if you're not using web standards, this is what you're saying to roughly 20% of internet users.

I know you're probably asking "what are web standards?" Well, web standards are nothing more than recommendations put forth by the w3c in an attempt to standardize the web. Standards are "best practices" for coding to ensure usability by all modern web browsers, and guarantee forward compatibility.

Often times, converting to standards compliant code requires nothing more than using CSS instead of font tags, writing properly nested HTML, and not using any browser-specific code (like < blink > or .innerHTML).

And the good news is, the w3c offers a code validator at http://validator.w3.org

Still need a reason to write standards compliant code? Lets look at some statistics.

As of June 2005 , only 72% of internet users were browsing with a current version of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Also as of June, there were 203,000,000 internet users in America. Is your IE only website is saying "I don't want your business" to more than 54 million Americans?

Do you use IE only JavaScript or browser detection in your site, have a flash based intro page, use a popup for content, or font tags? Is your site done in FrontPage? Do you use inline frames?

If so, you're not only refusing visitors but you're wasting money too.

By using web standards, the typical FrontPage website can be reduced from 60k to 20k, thus only using 1/3 of your bandwidth.

Simply removing the depreciated font and center tags and switching to an external CSS file can reduce a 30k website down to 15 or 20k. Not only will this drastically increase your website's speed, but it'll also save you money on hosting and make your pages more attractive to search engines.

Using ECMAscript instead of the browser specific JavaScript or Jscript will not only assure your code will work in all future browsers, but it will stop you from paying developers to code IE and Netscape specific versions of your website.

What's that, you haven't heard of ECMAscript? Chances are your web developer hasn't either. ECMAscript is the cross browser standard version of JavaScript; it's been around since 1988.

You don't see gas stations that only sell gas for Toyotas, so why do we design websites that only work in Internet Explorer?

Much of the problem stems from the fact that we tend to view the web as print. It's not. Different users will see different things, let them; just make sure your site works in all browsers. I've seen a lot of pretty websites in IE that just don't work at all in Firefox or Lynx.

Are aesthetics so important that they're worth alienating 20% of your potential customers?
About the Author
bout the Author: Ryan Jones is a University of Michigan graduate who is currently working as a web developer. He runs several popular websites (including his Internet Slang Translator at www.noslang.com ), and has authored articles for many more. You can learn more about Ryan, his websites, and interests at http://design.thehockeygod.com