Web Standards Education
By David Golding
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Personally, I appreciate good documentation efforts not only because I’m a believer in education– especially the self-help kind (it’s the most cost-efficient way to learn)–but because well-documented projects reduce dead weight loss and inefficiency. In other words, when everyone better understands what the experts know, simply put, there is much less hassle, especially when it comes to programming.
Possibly the worst of all coding smorgasbords is HTML/CSS. I mean, no other markup language has been so terribly implemented (Internet Explorer! Gasp!) and at the same time so widely used (can anything top the world wide web in terms of developer base?). Yet, surprisingly, web standards are slow in coming. Sure, they’re there, and who can doubt the number of web standards evangelists out there urging us all to improve our markup? But until the powers that be (namely, the big four: Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Opera) all subscribe to web standards, we all get to continue finding hacks for creating a three-column layout or using transparency in graphics and rounded corners.
I came across Opera’s web standards curriculum and was impressed. Clearly, Opera is fighting for dear life when considering their market share compared to other browsers, and I think it’s fairly obvious that their strategy is to ride the web standards wave to try to grab customers. Heck, they suedMicrosoft over web standards and anti-trust. But the need for a consensus on web standards is still sorely needed, and Opera’s push to educators to more effectively teach web development is certainly relevant. For instance, I was shocked how often at my alma mater, the top professors in Information Systems were teaching outdated methods for web development, and this was at a top-ranked business school.
Though a life where web standards are fully implemented across all the major browsers is one I don’t think I’ll ever experience, I still appreciate when somebody makes the effort.
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