Website development tips: W3C & Validation

Not all website development services are professional. Professional web development requires the developers (as well as the web application development company) to follow a set of web standard and guidelines. This is realized through W3C, short for World Wide Web Consortium. There are innumerable web browsers today- Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and so on. Code incompatibility can lead to improper rendering of websites in one or more than one of the browsers. As the W3C lays down a set of guidelines, it is up to the web programming experts and web designers to follow these for better corporate web development. Developing a website takes an altogether different approach when the web programming expert and designer follows W3C guidelines. This is especially true of dynamic website development or interactive website development. If you go through a website developer job description, the ability to develop a website totally in CSS is mandatory these days. Standardization is important as most technologies (web development technologies too) are interdependent. Hence, there is need for a standard interface and standardized data communication protocols. In simple words, W3C aims at ensuring that computers across the world speak/communicate the same language, and that web pages look the same on all web browsers. Use of Standardized and Validated Code is important because different web browsers render HTML in different ways. As a result, the code may work well in some of the browsers, nut may crash on others. These days, website development forums are also educating web programming experts and designers to consider all major browsers, and not just one. Not to forget, PDA’s, mobile phones and other electronic devices are internet-friendly. Hence custom web application development and ecommerce website design companies should educate and encourage their developers and designers to follow W3C standard to develop better websites. You must have seen that not all web designers and developers use W3C validated code. What is the reason behind this? This is because even the most popular HTML editors do not generate fully compatible code. As Adobe Dreamweaver is better than the rest, people using other editors suffer. Now, here is a shocker! Microsoft FrontPage generates code only for the Internet Explorer, thus making it one of the worst editors. There are many custom web application development companies that have developers following the ‘hand coding’ approach for business website development. But even this does not guarantee 100% compatibility. The problem worsens in case of flash website development or developing a cool web design with fancier features (like drop-down menus) as not all web browsers support these. That is why companies offering site development services should ensure that the website development project plan is developed keeping in mind the W3C standards. They should also give the website development proposal keeping the guidelines in mind.