Web standards
Hit-or-miss programming is not our style. We don't take short-cuts, we follow web standards to make sure Ideadesigners' websites work now and in the future.
Standards aren't goals, but tools. When used properly, they are beneficial:
- Widest audience. There are lots of different browsers and the subset of web standards is their only common denominator.
- Future compatibility. We follow the same standards that browser vendors do, so no matter the changes in the browsers, or in future hand-held, or other devices, Ideadesigners' websites will continue to work in future versions.
- Compliance with UK law, Disability Discrimination Act
- Quality control. We check our websites against the W3C validation programs. We can objectively demonstrate that our websites conform to standards.
Technically:
- HTML4.01 Strict or XHTML/1.0 produced via XML serializer
- CSS1/2.1 used for layout
- WAI/508 accessibility
- Care taken to produce valid code wherever it matters
- Full support for majority of browsers: Firefox, Opera, Safari, with special care taken of Internet Explorer 6 and 7
- The site will be readable (not neccessarily pretty) in outdated and text-only browsers (which is a plus, because these are usually completely left out).
- Content will be accessible from standards-compliant mobile browsers (smartphones)
