W3C What?

Posted On: 2015-01-23

If you haven't heard of the W3C then perhaps you should quietly close this browser window and run away, don't walk, just run as fast as you can and never look back.

Those of us who are trapped in W3C hell can never be rescued, you cannot save us and you may not even be able to save yourself because W3C has a strange way of drawing you in, enticing you with promises of perfection and then destroying you with ridicule as they lash your code and show you how hopeless you are at creating perfect code.

You think I joke? I will tell you a little story about W3C in a moment but first I should tell you what W3C is. W3C says this about themselves: "W3C's primary activity is to develop protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. W3C's standards define key parts of what makes the World Wide Web work.” And they say a lot more about themselves at w3.org

In other words, if you write code that complies with all the W3C standards then your website will work perfectly in all browsers. If you don't, or can't ride code that meets the W3C's concept of perfection then you are a totally hopeless fraud who should not even own a computer. Well they don't actually say that but then W3C has lots of zealots out there in Internet Land, zealots who will tell you exactly what I just said.

If you can't write code that meets the W3C's strict standards then you should go back to flipping burgers and leave the Internet to hairy-chested coders who can write pure code. But wait a moment, you may not have even known about W3C until you started reading this column and yet the code you write for your websites seems to work in every browser doesn't it?

Of course it does, your code may not be W3C compliant, you may not even know what W3C compliant code looks like but your code works doesn't it? Mine certainly does, Facebook's code certainly does and Google's does too and all three of us have websites out there that display perfectly well in all browsers and yet neither Google, Facebook or I have code on our websites that is W3C compliant.

So why would anyone want to stress about being W3C compliant? It beats me and yet there are some people out there who really do stress about having websites that are pure when measured against the criteria set down by the W3C and unfortunately I've bumped into one.

I was building a website for a client who was selling a product produced by someone in Europe. The site was going well, it was looking good in all major browsers and mobile devices; the client was happy and so was I. The product was interesting too even though it was a little bit out there on the fringe and probably only loved by Luddite's but the site was good ... or so I thought.

Then the product maker appeared on the scene. My client's site was not W3C compliant and it would have to change. If I needed any guidance the product maker's website was compliant and I should use that as a guide. I admit that I laughed when I saw the product maker's website. It would have looked old-fashioned back in 1996 when I first started but, at least it had one thing going for it, it was W3C compliant.

It might not have had any images but it was W3C compliant. It might have been poorly constructed, poorly laid out, and had no real selling power but it was W3C compliant and if my client wanted to continue to do business with his supplier (obviously he did because no one else supplied what my client wanted to sell) then I was going to have to make my client's site W3C compliant.

That took me weeks because part way through the rebuild the supplier decided that my client should not have any Javascript on his site either. Do you know how hard it is to build things like contact forms that people might actually want to use without resorting to Javascript? Do you know how hard it is to organize navigation for multiple pages without resorting to Javascript?

I hope you never do have to find out because things like that are what make you want to tear your hair out, rip your clothes into shreds and go running naked down the street. However, in the end, I succeeded and once my client's site went live it began to outsell his supplier's site which lead to a heap of other problems ... but then it would have continued to outsell the supplier's site whether it was W3C compliant or not because it rendered perfectly in every browser, it was neatly responsive and delivered a great experience on mobile devices.

It may not have been W3C compliant but it still looked good in every browser, it engaged the people who came to the site and it continued to look good as the size of the view screen was reduced. What is there not to like about a site like that?

And the moral of the story is? Don't get fooled into believing that you have to pay any attention to the W3C or their devotees because they seem totally oblivious to the fact that, these days, no one cares what they say because the Web has moved on and left them behind. So don't listen to them because if you listen to them you will only become enslaved to a set of rules that rules that are totally irrelevant to today's Web.