[thelist] RE: the standards thread

Tom Dell'Aringa pixelmech at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 8 13:23:23 CDT 2004


Lots of great discussion here - I'd like to see it continue :)

Max just wrote a great post, I appreciate that. In regard to adoption of Gecko/non-IE browsers.
I've always observed that many if not most of these adopters are "tech" folk. The interesting
thing about us tech folks is - we buy stuff on the Internet - lots of stuff. Not only do we buy
stuff, we buy bigger ticket items. Not just books, but high priced software, clothes, the
entertainment dollar etc.

So while the % of the users is low, those users are a particularly desireable segment of the user
base. It's interesting that I have not seen any studies done on this yet.

I myself have been to sites trying to buy something in FireFox and have had trouble. A few times
I've begrudingly moved to IE to make the purchase. Just as many times or more - I found myself
another vendor. Because that vendor did not instill any confidence in me at all by their behavior
of totally breaking my user experience. How do I know their shopping cart is secure then? What
else is gummed up in their system that they couldn't do right?

While this is a personal experience of mine, my guess is that I'm far from the only one.

In regards to the benefits of standards - definitely read up at Maccaws.org on that. But anyway,
the real selfish reason why I am totally for standards is that it makes MY life SO much easier. 

Mention was made of big legacy sites that are too much trouble to move to standards. I work on one
every day, and I curse those that came before me every day because my job is that much harder due
to the fact that the code is a mess. We have X amount of problems in QA and production simply
because of this. 

How much money do you think is wasted in time dealing with these issues? I can tell you it's a
lot. Had the site been coded to standards, a significant savings would have been achieved simply
in maintenance costs ALONE - not even taking into consideration the users. I can assure you that
when you talk time and money, you're bosses and clients will listen. Ours have.

I've already had to make changes to TruGreen however, and it's been a snap. 

I've been a standards proponent for quite awhile now, and the whole reason I founded Maccaws.org
was because of the push back by those who claimed standards "doesn't make business sense." I
really believe that argument has easily been proved as flawed and false. If you follow 95% of the
standards discussion on the Internet  it isn't about the validity of using them - we're past that
now - its all about the implementation, and it's all about new users learning how to do it.

Not meaning to classify anyone who has posted on this thread - but I've found time and time again
that those who cannot or will not learn something new will find a way to rationalize why they will
not do so. There's still quite a bit of this push back going on, even in the face of the
overwhelming evidence of the benefits of web standards.

Benefits of web standards? Without question, many. Detractors? Still some out there. But those who
are pressing on have created amazing work that has pushed the envelope, and this work continues
each day. So the great news is that web standards is moving forward and a good pace, and those who
will not embrace it will sooner or later find themselves left behind. That's how it works in this
industry - be current, or be dying - and that's your career I'm talking about! :)

Cheers.

Tom 

=====
http://www.Pixelmech.com/ - read my latest blog posting!

John 3:16





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