[thelist] Re: Why code for standards

[Peter-Paul Koch]

>Time for a bit of devil's advocacy:

Used to be my job <g>.

>Why do we want to code for standards? Is it to avoid the
>extra work involved in multiple sets of coding plus the
>intelligence to serve the correct one?

You know, this is one of the best questions I've heard in the past year. Why
indeed?

The often quoted answer is, of course: To keep your code simple and avoid
browser specific branches , both because of the initial production time and
because of updating.

But this all depends on the browsers following the standards. Since they
don't do that, why still insist on coding to the standards? I don't say it's
wrong to code following the standards, but I want to know *why*.

Another, more subtle answer would be "So we can blame the browsers if
something goes wrong". This is of course not a viable alternative if you
code for money (at least, as long as it works in IE5), but it might be
somewhere in the back of many minds (my own mind included, I often blame NN4
for not following my CSS commands).

Thanks for the question, Martin.

>Now I can see the point of that in a booming economy when
>we're all overloaded with work, but that's not the case anymore.
>
>Times are hard. We're short of work. We have to work our backsides
>off to find it.
>
>So why are we turning away free work handed to us on a plate? And
>more - there are a lot of people who *only* know standards (or one
>browser). Knowing how to code round a lot of them is a competitive
>advantage - sell it to your clients as a 'must have' requirement for a
>professional, and you lock out your competitors.

I often thought this in my heart. "Hope the browsers don't start to *really*
follow the standard, or I'd be out of work". <g>

ppk

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