With the ever increasing technology of today it is essential to have standards for Web development. This creates greater challenges for Web designers, but ensures that the user will be able to use the site. If no one had standards to design by what the designer created might be useless to the person accessing it. If the browser is not compatible with the code or uses a different font than what their browser supports, they will not get the same effect that the designer tried to create.

Using Web standards gives your site greater accessibility and more visibility in Web searches. Older browsers will still understand the structure of the document. They may not be able to display the coolest additions, but they will provide the basic information to the user. For the business owner, this is essential to their business, because they will most likely have people with the newest updated browsers and clients with older versions. If they use the Web standard, they will be able to reach both clients adequately.  This also makes the site easier to develop and maintain.

Many people don’t upgrade their browsers for as long as 18 months after the upgrades become available making it difficult for the designers to get a great site in front of them. Zeldman was referring to this dilemma when he wrote his article, “To hell with bad browsers”. Today, because of the Web standards, more people are able to get the basic meaning out of the Web pages. It enables the designer to develop a site that is supported by older browsers, but with enhanced features in newer browsers that support the CSS version that they used.

In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly. The site should be compatible to CSS, HTML and (X)HTML. It should use the necessary codes and not have any broken links. It should also use alts for images just in case the image doesn’t load, so the user can still see what would have been there.

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