Keeping up standards

November 10, 2008 · by EspenAO

“There are still many developers who earn their crust creating sites using bad practices.”

These are the words of our very own Chris Mills, Developer Relations Manager. A lot of developers, when asked about the rate of web standards education and adoption, will probably answer, “We’re doing alright, aren’t we?” Certainly, things have got better. The original browser wars are over, and all the major browsers now do a pretty good job of supporting all the major web technologies.

Download and read the full article exclusively here at Choose Opera.

Readers' comments 10

Left under the original article, as archived.

TriMN10. November 2008, 13:05:15
Chas410. November 2008, 13:35:54
Sounds Standard Compliant

Using web standard code allows more customers to your site
DesertDawg10. November 2008, 14:42:03
Ja! Ich bin bereit! Es ist gut!

The original browser wars are over,...

Now, it is just sporadic gunfire!
dantesoft10. November 2008, 14:44:43
"earn their crust" Did you just gratuitously mention pie?
coxy10. November 2008, 15:14:41
Chris Mills has some serious hair going on there.

[stereotype]
I bet he likes metal.
[/stereotype]
EspenAO10. November 2008, 15:17:58
I think he looks more like John Lennon after Yoko.
coxy10. November 2008, 15:45:56
Very true, EspenAO! Never thought of him.

On a more serious note; I've just read that article and agree with every single word he said. I think there's the issue that many developers are still 'forced' to develop for browsers that aren't considered 'Grade A' (ie, Internet Explorer 6) and this is because the clients and the companies they work for are still using said browsers.

A few weeks ago I was thinking of making a website - named something like goodbrowserguide.com - that would be aimed at schools, colleges, universities, small businesses and to a greater extent large corporates encouraging them to upgrade their browsers.

It would explain to them in plain English why this is an important issue, that it would be far beneficial for them in future, help suppliers produce better quality web-based work for them and how they should be able to do it without compromising intranets, etc.

However, I am thinking that I'd have to make the site, look respectable (me? really? respectable?) then try and get organisations like W3C and people like Chris Mills and Håkon Wium Lie to back the project in an attempt to get companies standing up and listening to what's going on.
radostsguy10. November 2008, 22:12:40
Does all this have anything to do with the fact that in the new Opera versions, you can't flip from tab to tab with the 1 and 2 keys anymore? That was one of Opera's best points, and I don't know why they dropped that. That "Alt Tab" thing, borrowed from IE of all places, SUX!

But now it looks like I'm truly screwed. Not by Opera or anything. I can't get my Site online because my new ISP, with wireless, blocks port 80! If I can't get around that, or find another ISP, that will be 10 years of work down the drain, plus countless hours of loving care. 32 GB and 8500 pages worth of work for naught!

I created the whole thing with Wordpad and Opera, starting back with 5.12. I've used every version of Opera that's come out since then. A truly loyal fan.
TriMN10. November 2008, 22:17:03
@radostguy, sure you can flip from tab to tab with 1 and 2. Go to Preferences => Advanced => Shortcuts and enable "single-key shortcuts"

Wow, what ISP blocks port 80. That's strange
Chas410. November 2008, 22:21:30
radostsguy the shourtcut for fliping thru tabs is still there it has just changed. For me on My Mac if I hold command and option then use the left or right arrow key. It is something simalr on Windows I think. I have been a fan since 9.x so you beat me by many years. You can find the keyboard shourtcuts here: http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/keyboard/index.dml