This is my first post to WSG, though I have been following discussions for a while. As someone who is pretty well versed in the internet industry, one thing I would like peoples opinions on is the degree to which adhering to standards actually discourages innovation.
Take for example one of our recent launches, www.subaru.com.au. According to three different independent evaluations, the site is extremely usable as well as being innovative, however if we stuck blindly to W3C suggestions, much of what is in the site would not have been possible. And I am sure it would fail many compliance tests, even though the site rates highly with the people it is actually made for, the users.
So the question is, at what point do you ditch innovation because it doesn't adhere with X standard. My personal opinion is that the W3C standards don't reflect the views of the majority of professional practitioners, so the standards may be out of touch with reality.
By the very fact that this is a forum run by the web standards group, I think you'll find that most people here do not think that standards hinder innovation. I'm certainly not of that opinion at all.
In fact, without being argumentative (because that's not my intention at all), I'd be very interested in examples of what's been done on subaru.com.au that would not be possible if the site were standards compliant.
I am with Kay, seriously what could not be done on subaru.com.au if the site was standards compliant?
The code amused me, there are 10 stylesheets, 16 javascript files and a enormous amount of inline styles and inline javascript. This site is going to be a nightmare to maintain.
It's interesting this should come up now cos I've just spent the last three days going through car manufacturers' websites cos we're thinking about getting a new car some time in the future. As we're talking about usability, while I did like the fact the Subaru site presented you with a pic and brief details of all the models on a single page, it was also the only site on which I couldn't find some of the technical info I was looking for, namely boot capacity and fuel consumption (listed under headings like 'technical data' or 'specifications' on other sites).
To answer your question Peter, I think most practitioners would agree that when you start moving into the area of Rich Internet Applications where the user's experience with the site is highly interactive, then technologies like Flash might be better suited.
But in the example you've given, this is not the case. So I would also be interested to hear what areas of the site were achieved, in your eyes, by ignoring web standards. Without burrowing into things too much, it looks to me like the developers have taken the first step of separating content and presentation, for which they should be commended. I'm not going to pass judgment on the fact that there are ten different style sheets, as there may be a very good reason for that. But someone has definitely dropped the ball in separating the JavaScript from the page structure, and as has been mentioned, this will certainly impact on the ability to maintain the site down the track.
Matty it was not the 10 style sheets I was worried about it was the amount of inline styles used.
The big concern (other than the horrendous loading time) if I was involved in subura.com.au is SEO. At least the site is in the top ten Australian sites for common search terms, but usually the bottom half, below reviews in the Australian, carguide.com, ebay and others.
Web standards are the primary innovation in web design over recent years. Having a qualifiable approach to language implementation allows for a more responsive development of web publishing languages, using richer features in each successive version.
There are a handful of standards which I find totally arbitrary and counter productive. So, for as long as how the existance of these rules benefit the end user remains unexplained, I will continue to break them so that I can produce websites which I consider to be 'best practice'.
And that, after all, is why we have standards. To define and produce best practice websites.
As for your website(subaru.com.au), I can't comment on it because I'm out of bandwidth for the next couple of days and at 32kbps I have abandoned it after three quarters of an hour trying to open up the homepage. Common experience? You betcha. There are plenty of people out there on capped plans like mine who are reduced to 32kbps and even 28kbps after they reach their download limit.
@ CBD: Standards don't hinder innovation - tho it can be hard for one person to be both innovative and standards-compliant; would probably help if they're different people. Standards compliance is more a science than an art - and getting bogged down in the details of standards compliance can inhibit outside-the-box thinking (which is the art side of it).
My graphic designer often shows me layouts that I just baulk at from an implementation PoV - but once the innovation and design is done, then it's just up to us to take up the challenge and produce something that both looks good AND (instead of OR) is standards compliant.
For me its the target property being removed. so the information flow now has to bet controlled by JavaScript instead of the application deciding how to handle the request (like new tab over new window)
If you are not going to adhere to your declared DOCTYPE, I don't see the point in declaring one.
If you had adhered to Web standards you might have followed your DOCTYPE declaration with an opening "html" tag on the pages of your subaru site, www.subaru.com.au!
For the most part, i am pretty much in agreement with most of the responses here. I am also interested in what would not be possible on this site if it was not standards compliant.
On a side note, had the developer used JavaScript unobtrusively this site would be much easier to maintain. Separating behavior from the site's structure and presentation is just as large of a part of Web Standards as is separating structure from presentation.
Would you ignore certain standards when building a house just so that you can achieve certian tasks in the least amount of time?
In the new age of the web (Web 2.0) standards is very important, and my personal opinion is that no developer should cut corners to achive a certian task.
Im shocked that multi million/billion pound car companies can not afford decent web developers, shame on them.