Stephen Erdmann Digital Solutions

Brett Welch discussed "Beyond Pixel Pushing, 3 steps to better websites and happier clients"

Eric Meyer discussed "Designing the Survey"

Scott Thomas discussed "Change the World" Wide Web

Derek Powazek discussed "The Wisdom of Communities"

Aaron Walters discssued "Findability Bliss through Web Standards"

Dan Rubin discussed "Designing Virtual Realism"

Robert Hoekman Jr. "On the spot Usability Review"

Dan Cederholm discussed "Bulletproof Web Design"

 

I have listened to Jeffrey Zeldman a few times in the past. Always great to see the "Father of Web Design".  He is not the most motivating speaker but somehow always seems to inspire that creative tick. For me, listening to Zeldman always make me feel warm and cozy, kind of like curling up to a good book.

He covered some basic principles of web design and also spoke about the art of defending your designs. A few keypoints he made were:

1. Practice the Alzheimers Methodology
2. Learn to Translate Your Ideas
3. Convey the Meaning of Design

He briefly spoke out the idea of seeling ideas and not pixels. By this he explained that your ideas or concepts are what is most important, not that this box is greeen and this one is blue.

Another topic Zeldman went over was that research and preparation can make you a very credible resource. I happen to really beleive this idea and have found it a very rewarding and successful technique.

Eric Meyer was the second speaker at the conference. I have also listened to him before. Eric jumped right into CSS and began to explain the AEA website redesign.

Ethan Marcotte gave a talk called "Comp vs. Code". I have never heard of him before but he seemed very versed on the day to day struggles between developers and designers.

Luke Wroblewski gave a talk called Web Form Design In Action. He discussed how valuable and important web forms can be.

Tara Hunt spoke on "Whuffie" Rich Design. See Notes for post.

Kristina Halvorson spoke on "Content First". See Notes for Post.

Jared Spool spoke on "Revealing the Design Secrets from the Amazon". See Notes for Post.

Brett Welch discussed "Beyond Pixel Pushing, 3 steps to better websites and happier clients"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the last nine months, I have immersed myself in researching the benefits of a "web standards compliant" design. Last July, I attended "Web Design World" in Seattle. This conference focused on the future of online design for four main categories: Coding, Design, Strategy, Usability. Two of the three keynote presentations caught my attention. The focus was on the marriage of presentation and structure, and how that is best achieved. As I listened to the keynotes, I realized that although I do practice many of these techniques, I have yet to fully realize the power of the message.

After the conference, I began to explore some of the examples shown and really began to research the benefits an organization could achieve. I began to ask myself questions like: What does it mean to truly separate content from structure? Is complying with the W3C really that important? What is the possible ROI with this type of investment?

Key benefits for an organization could include:

1. Improved Efficiency on a Web Development Team
   
   • True separation of content from structure
   • Less code or markup
   • One CSS file stores 99.9% of all layout and design
   • Updated/new designs become easier and faster to implement
   • 3rd party services/new employees become easier to educate with a standards based approach
   • Code becomes easily validated and corrected through the W3C validation service
   • Consistent use of the media attribute for use in on-screen delivery, printer versions, PDA's etc.
2. Become Backwards/Forwards Compatible with all Browsers Types
   
   • Includes Screen Readers
   • Browser Independence
3. Increased Accessibility
   
   • Section 508 or Special Needs
   • Internet enabled devices such as PDA’s, phones, TVs etc. that do not use CSS can deliver extensible content.
   • Compliant documents can easily be converted to other formats such as databases and word documents
4. Increase website performance and speed
   
   • Smaller file sizes will result in quicker down loads
   • XSLT used for structural presentation only
   • Pages will render quicker because of faster XSLT transformations
   • Pages enter and exit the server cache faster
   • Need to purchase additional processors/memory slows
5. Enable better integration for multilingual content
   
   • Unicode, utf-8
   • Enables less graphical navigation and increase text oriented design for easier translation in the future
6. Improved performance with Search Engine Optimization
   
   • Indexing becomes faster
   • Improved ratio of content to code
   • Combined with semantic markup, well organized content, and hyper links, a standards based design is the best way to improve search engine rankings

Summary
There is a definite transition taking place on the web today. Developing web sites that are standards-compliant are becoming the norm for experience design teams and the sites they build. Teams at companies like Wired, ESPN, Sony UK, LEE Jeans, Mozilla, RedHat, and SAS are benefitting from this transition. As noted above, the benefits for any organization are great and can include shortening development/design cycles, improving SEO, and increasing worldwide accessibility. For more information on the benefits of Web Standards, I recommend the following links.

Articles

1. My Web site is standard! And yours?
2. WaSP: Fighting for Standards
3. Developing With Web Standards
4. About Web Standards
5. The Business Value of Web Standards
6. What are the advantages of using web standards?

 

Case Studies

1. Making News with Web standards
2. (Not So) Heavy Chevy