Website Design Forum - Web design quality standards

Author

Web design quality standards

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-28, 11:17 pm

Hello guys,

I'd like to set up a list of web dev quality standards, but something
different from the W3C, something closer to the real world. Over the
years I've tried to follow accessibility guidelines, and I found that
in the end, I've lost many cool features that don't mean "evil
development" necessarily. For instance Flash used properly can be a
good thing. Same for Ajax, for embedded videos, etc...

My idea is having grades from 1 to 5 stars to qualify web sites, 5
being a very good site. The criteria are general-purpose to rate the
quality. I'd like to know what you think about the idea :)

I have set up a quick draft, and if you're interested, we could revamp
this paper: http://guidelines.dreamhosters.com

Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions!

2007-10-28, 11:17 pm

"Charles A. Landemaine" <landemaine@XXXXXXXXXX> wrote in message
news:1193621033.752371.255460@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
> Hello guys,
>
> I'd like to set up a list of web dev quality standards, but something
> different from the W3C, something closer to the real world.

"Active links have no dotted outline".

If you mean the focus rectangle then removing it is a severe accessibility
issue. Without that focus rectangle anybody who does not use a mouse (for
whatever reason) cannot navigate the site.

I would suggest you make that a minus 5 star point rather than a 5 star one.

Once I saw this I rather lost interest in seriously considering the rest of
your points, other than to note that some of them seem rather odd and
misplaced.

--
Richard.

Beauregard T. Shagnasty

2007-10-28, 11:17 pm

Charles A. Landemaine wrote:

> Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions!

Not using Transitional doctypes for new pages...

--
-bts
-Motorcycles defy gravity; cars just suck

Ed Mullen

2007-10-28, 11:17 pm

Charles A. Landemaine wrote:
> Hello guys,
>
> I'd like to set up a list of web dev quality standards, but something
> different from the W3C, something closer to the real world. Over the
> years I've tried to follow accessibility guidelines, and I found that
> in the end, I've lost many cool features that don't mean "evil
> development" necessarily. For instance Flash used properly can be a
> good thing. Same for Ajax, for embedded videos, etc...
>
> My idea is having grades from 1 to 5 stars to qualify web sites, 5
> being a very good site. The criteria are general-purpose to rate the
> quality. I'd like to know what you think about the idea :)
>
> I have set up a quick draft, and if you're interested, we could revamp
> this paper: http://guidelines.dreamhosters.com
>
> Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions!
>

Good luck.

"Web standards" is an oxymoron. Perhaps a nice goal, but the W3C is a
total hash, nearly unreadable, browser devs try to observe it but find
it inexplicably dense and unreadable. And they then, each to their own,
interpret it in their own way, leaving us with clients (browsers) that
are, sometimes, miles apart on their attempt to conform to the
"standard." Go ahead, read the "standards" and let me know.

A standard that is only a suggestion is not a standard. A standard that
is poorly articulated and indecipherable is worse, it is chaos. I
suspect that is why Microsoft (so famously) decided years ago to go
their own way and attempt (in futility) to impose their proprietary (and
flawed) technology on the world.

We are lucky (at best) that the major browsers render any page in a
similar manner. And, if Web design is relegated to only the arcane
nit-pickers, we will be left with a Web that is not what it was
envisioned to be. And, frankly, pretty much useless to mortal man, and
only useful to commercial interests which can afford to hire those who
will design to a "standard" that can't spell W3C.

The good news is that there are more non-commercial pages than
commercial ones. So, unless you're shopping for a lamp shade, you
should still be able to find something useful. And, perhaps even design
a simple page that conveys useful information easily.

Or, hey, maybe sanity will out and save the day. Could be wrong.
Probably am wrong. I just long for a cessation of the insanity and an
adoption of an attitude of: "Well, hell, that'll work for two years,
let's do that!" And then, ten months or so later, the group goes:
"Dang! That worked great for 18 months! But, uh, oops! We need to
modify it so that ..." And then they all go: "Ok! That only took four
months! Great! Release the standard! Hell, we'll just need to release
an update in 3 months (although it'll take us six months ...) ... and
it'll take 14 months for the devs to mod all the browsers but ... uh ...
Yes! We're doing good because we are creating "standards!"

I think I need another drink.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

2007-10-29, 4:16 am

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" <a.nony.mous@example.invalid> wrote in message
news:l6bVi.292923$ax1.162358@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> Charles A. Landemaine wrote:
>
>
> Not using Transitional doctypes for new pages...

Not serving XHTML up as text/html.

--
Richard.

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-29, 7:19 pm

On Oct 28, 11:05 pm, Ed Mullen <e...@edmullen.net> wrote:
> "Web standards" is an oxymoron. Perhaps a nice goal, but the W3C is a
> total hash, nearly unreadable, browser devs try to observe it but find
> it inexplicably dense and unreadable. And they then, each to their own,
> interpret it in their own way, leaving us with clients (browsers) that
> are, sometimes, miles apart on their attempt to conform to the
> "standard." Go ahead, read the "standards" and let me know.

Thanks, Ed. This is why I wanted to do something different, some
quality guidelines.

> A standard that is only a suggestion is not a standard.

Then let's call it "guidelines" :)

What do you think about the idea? With this, we could help web devs
improve the quality giving them tips to improve and get a better
grade.
Thanks,

Charles.

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-29, 7:19 pm

On Oct 28, 10:57 pm, "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
<a.nony.m...@example.invalid> wrote:
> Not using Transitional doctypes for new pages...

Good idea. I added it.
Thanks,

Charles.

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-29, 7:19 pm

On Oct 29, 1:45 am, "rf" <r...@invalid.com> wrote:
> Not serving XHTML up as text/html.

Thanks. Is it that important, Richard? What about the spread of
criteria ? Do you think it's done properly or do you think the rate
should depend on the number of checked criteria, whatever they are?

Charles.

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-29, 7:19 pm

On Oct 28, 10:47 pm, "rf" <r...@invalid.com> wrote:
> If you mean the focus rectangle then removing it is a severe accessibility
> issue. Without that focus rectangle anybody who does not use a mouse (for
> whatever reason) cannot navigate the site.

Thanks, I didn't know about that. But then I guess they can't play/
stop a Flash player...
Anyway, I removed it.

Charles.

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-29, 7:19 pm

On Oct 28, 10:47 pm, "rf" <r...@invalid.com> wrote:
> "Active links have no dotted outline".
>
> If you mean the focus rectangle then removing it is a severe accessibility
> issue. Without that focus rectangle anybody who does not use a mouse (for
> whatever reason) cannot navigate the site.

Hi Richard, actually I tried to access links using keyboard tab and
it's working great! :)
I did this:

function blurAnchor() {
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for(i=0;i<anchors.length;i++){
anchors[i].blur();
}
}

<body onClick="blurAnchor()">

It blurs the anchor tags only when you click, so you shouldn't have
any accessibility issue with other devices.

Charles.

Chris Morris

2007-10-29, 7:19 pm

"Charles A. Landemaine" <landemaine@XXXXXXXXXX> writes:
> On Oct 28, 10:47 pm, "rf" <r...@invalid.com> wrote:
>
> It blurs the anchor tags only when you click, so you shouldn't have
> any accessibility issue with other devices.

It's a (less important, but still there) accessibility issue with the
mouse. I was using a web application today [1] and found it helpful to be
able to see at a glance which the last link I'd clicked on was.

I also sometimes use a combination of the mouse and keyboard to
navigate (so, say there's a list of documents about a topic, I might
click to get the first one, and then use 'backspace, tab, return' to open
the next one), which this would break.

Of course, I also don't browse with Javascript enabled, so I'd not be
affected by this anyway, but other people might have it turned on.

[1] The application was a table of bug reports, one report per row,
with a link on each row that went to the screen to close or update
that report. I wanted to close several at once, and the reports were
large enough that only a few took up most of the screen (in a table
with 30 or 40 of them). It takes a few seconds to load each new page,
and from experience, I know that the quickest way to do this is to
open a whole bunch of edit pages in new tabs, then go through the tabs
closing the reports. Having the focus rectangle on the last clicked
link meant that I didn't lose my place after scrolling down to the
next one.

--
Chris

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-30, 7:19 pm

On Oct 29, 6:22 pm, Chris Morris <c.i.mor...@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> It's a (less important, but still there) accessibility issue with the
> mouse. I was using a web application today [1] and found it helpful to be
> able to see at a glance which the last link I'd clicked on was.

I see what you mean. When you hit back, you want to see what row you
clicked.

> Of course, I also don't browse with Javascript enabled

Is it a choice? Is there a reason for it?
Thanks,

Charles.

Chris Morris

2007-10-30, 11:17 pm

"Charles A. Landemaine" <landemaine@XXXXXXXXXX> writes:
> On Oct 29, 6:22 pm, Chris Morris <c.i.mor...@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> I see what you mean. When you hit back, you want to see what row you
> clicked.

Exactly.

>
> Is it a choice? Is there a reason for it?

Various reasons (the first three are probably quite common reasons for
it, the latter two maybe not so much), and yes, it's a definite
choice. Incidentally, I'm quite happy to use Javascript in web
applications that I write, in moderation and as an optional useful
extra.

The vast majority of sites I use only use Javascript to make their
adverts more annoying or omnipresent, and/or for optional extras that
I don't care about (or actively don't want, if they mess with the user
interface too much), and work fine for what I want (reading content)
without it. So it's disabled by default and selectively enabled via
Firefox's NoScript extension [1] if a site (or more likely a feature
on a site that I do want) absolutely requires it (my enable list is
very short indeed)

Most web tracker things use Javascript to get more information about
the browser, and some (e.g. Google Analytics) work solely via
Javascript. It's nice not to be tracked so much just on principle.

There's also a lot of recent security vulnerabilities that either
directly exploit weaknesses in the Javascript interpreter or use
mistakes in web applications (all too easy to make in many popular web
application languages) to do cross-site scripting. Again, not
something I want to happen to me.

Quite a few of the PCs I use are relatively old, which means a
badly-coded bit of Javascript (especially now people are trying all
this AJAX stuff whether it's a good fit for their problem or not) can
really slow things down.

Finally, my preferred secondary browsers (W3M or Lynx, depending on
whether I'd find table support helpful or not) don't support Javascript.

[1] It's the reason I moved to Firefox rather than Opera as my primary
browser.

--
Chris

Charles A. Landemaine

2007-10-30, 11:17 pm

On Oct 30, 8:23 pm, Chris Morris <c.i.mor...@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Various reasons

Thanks Chris for the info. I agree that Ajax can turn a site faster if
well used (ie: Gmail) but many times, it turns the web site slower
than intended (ie: Yahoo!Mail Beta; Digg).

Charles.

Calande

2007-11-17, 10:17 pm

Charles A. Landemaine wrote:
> I'd like to set up a list of web dev quality standards

Seems like a good idea to me.

--
Calande