Client-Side Web Standards

The desktop browser wars are over. In the 90's, well-intentioned browser vendors made our page-layout lives miserable with rendering incompatibilities. Since HTML was only intended to describe page structure, not appearance, each vendor was free to render any HTML structural element as they saw fit, and to invent new tags not related to document structure at all. Web pages were practically guaranteed to have different appearances in different browsers.

Things are better now. Browser capabilities have coalesced around three web standards: XHTML, for document structuring; Cascading Style Sheets, for page layout and appearance; and the Javascript Document Object Model for interactivity. Current versions of all major and minor desktop browsers support these standards to a gratifying level of completeness, with commitments to more perfect support in upcoming versions.

The dark ages of browser detection, and multiple versions of the same page for delivery to different browsers, are over. Pages can now be designed to render correctly in any modern browser, yet still look acceptable (maybe not pixel-perfect!) in the software of the past.

Accessibility

There is an accelerating movement, often mandated by law, to make public websites accessible to the handicapped. The Federal government requires conformance to Section 508 standards and California and other states have passed similar standards. The key to meeting the standards is clean separation of page structure and appearance through the use of XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets.

Book of revelations: