I have to hang my head and cry, I really do. I've been looking at so called professional Web Design and Development sites again. It's always been interesting for me to search out the competitors to see how they differenciate themselves in what's become a jam packed, filled to the gills, shark infested, over saturated business sector.
Everyone is pretty much selling the exact same thing, give or take a paragraph or 10, and job titles continue to mutate with the arrival of new technologies and processess. Commercial Artists became Graphic Designers who then evolved into Digital Media Designers - the main noticable difference being common sense. The divide between true creative talent widening as computer software improves to the point where everyone who has a copy of Photoshop thinks they are a web designer and everyone who has a copy of Dreamweaver fools themselves into believing that they are Web Developers. There is now so much choice out there that I have to wonder how a potential client decides which Web Design and Development company they will work with.
So much has changed in the Web Dev industry, the landscape has shifted so much that in as little as 10 years, design and development considerations and responsibilities are now unrecognisable by todays standards. Talking about standards, this brings me to a particular bone of contention that could be so easily chewed clean but simply continues to remain across so many old and new Design/Development websites and is little short of misrepresentation.
About 5 years ago, new claims started to quickly appear on Web Dev Websites, these being "We build to W3C standards". Now those of us in the know will tell you that the W3C is not a portaloo made for three bums. "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential." Their words, not mine.
Those in the know will also tell you that the W3C has been around since October, 1994. So the idea of developing websites to a standard isn't new. However; the realisation that claiming to build to a set of standards makes for a darn good sales point which has only really taken off over the past 5 or so years.
What is so disappointing to me is that so many so called professional Website Design and Development companies who do claim to build with due care and attention to detail, not only fail miserably with their clients projects but they also fail with their own Websites. The term "Put your money where your mouth is" springs to mind.
Now from a Clients perspective being able to validate their Web Developers HTML and CSS code is a great way to gage if they are getting their monies worth. It can also help the Client to decide who to employ. Do you really want to work with a development company who simply doesn't care enough about delivering the best in quality? You are probably paying good money for the service and if it were me, I'd want to know that I'm getting excellence rather than mediocrity for my dollar.
From the developers perspective, showing their Client how to run the W3C validator to check the markup validity of their Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, CSS etc. It's an excellent way to grow trust and understanding between developer and client. There are so few ways for a client who has zero technical knowledge to know whats going on under the bonet and equally, there are few ways for a Web Developer to show their Client that they really do care about how they code a Website and quality control their work. It makes sense then, that validating ones code adds value and oozes integrity and professionalism.
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