[thelist] What does standard compliance actually mean?

Arthur Maloney ArthurM at seipas.com
Thu Oct 6 10:01:30 CDT 2005


Hello aardvark,

Thursday, October 6, 2005, 3:27:15 PM, you wrote:

a> On 6 Oct 2005 at 15:20, Andreas Wahlin wrote:

>> To many, standard compliance seem to mean stuff like "semantic web"  
>> and sometimes even "unobtrusive scripting/graceful degradation". But  
>> doesen't standard compliance just mean that you follow your declared  
>> doctype and validate against the w3c validator, not that I  
>> automaticly write insanely great webpages (from a code view)?
>> This may be a bit of a philosophical discussion of course ...

a> initially, yes, which is a problem...

a> internally, i've tried to distill it down... we have internal 
a> standards... my people have to meet those, and those are made up of 
a> the following:

a> - W3C HTML 4.01 Trans validation (some exceptions are allowed, but 
a> must be documented)
a> - W3C CSS 2.1 validation
a> - WAI WCAG 1.0 minimum A compliance
a> - Section 508 compliance

a> those are the 'standards' to which we adhere... i also have other 
a> internal published standards here that cover things like:

a> - appropriate use of HTML elements (semantic, structural, 
a> simplification)
a> - appropriate use of CSS
a> - naming conventions (for classes, ids, forms, pages, files, etc.)
a> - accessibility statement
a> - UK accessibility-style accesskeys
a> - overall page file size (including images, script, css, etc.)
a> - overall page pixel size
a> - forms layout
a> - code formatting (spaces, indents, etc.)
a> - JS testing
a> - browser testing
a> - UI guidelines for applications / Flash / etc.
a> - some default page content (404, error, etc.)
a> - overall simplicity (strive to make it as simple as possible)

a> obviously a lot of this requires hands-on review... but that allows 
a> me to constantly refine and re-test these internal standards... and 
a> it allows everyone else to learn them and contribute feedback...

a> for example, it is my standard that we will not create a page that 
a> has content that jumps from an h1 to an h3 -- the h2 must not be 
a> skipped... back in the day, rudy and i used to spar on this 
a> regularly, which helped me refine that requirement internally...

a> also, the W3C validator sometimes changes its rules... it's important 
a> to have a test page you can run through regularly to see how it 
a> handles pages (it recently decided my doctypes are not valid, even 
a> though they were validated when my site relaunched in april)...

>> If anyone could support their views with articles, I'd appreciate it  
>> greatly :)

a> sure, just look at everything i've written on evolt.org, and the 
a> books where i have written some chapters... how's that for a cop-out?

>> (yes, I'm writing a master's thesis)

a> eek... well, good luck with that...


Intresting could you give an example of a "UK accessibility-style accesskeys"

-- 
Best regards,
 Arthur                            mailto:ArthurM at seipas.com



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