W3C Standards
When a webpage arrives at your computer, it is in fact just a text file. Your web browser then interprets that page of text and turns it into what you see. A group called W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is responsible for defining the language in which websites are written. If your webpage is to be understood by the web browser and displayed correctly, it is vital that its grammar and punctuation are correct. A website written in this way is said to be standards compliant.
How can you know that your site is standards compliant?
All sites I produce are W3C standards compliant, and will be tested as such. Even if you haven't a clue what it should look like behind the scenes, W3C provide online validation services that can check the content of a site for you. All websites I produce will be validated to:
You can test any page on this site by clicking on the icons at the bottom right hand corner of the page.
My website looks fine on my computer so it must be fine, surely?
In short, not necessarily. Despite W3C defining how elements of webpages should appear, even the major web browsers still interpret pages differently. Ensuring that your site is written correctly provides the best starting point, however it does not guarantee that all will run smoothly. I therefore test all sites in the following browsers to ensure the utmost stability:
- Internet Explorer V 6 & 7 (approx 50% of users)
- Mozilla Firefox (approx 40% of users)
- Apple's Safari (approx 2% of users)