Clareo Consulting, LLC
Technical Standards
In the first third of the Web's fifteen year life, it was a relative anarchy in terms of technical standards, leading to many challenges keeping Web sites working on multiple Web browsers, with each browser behaving in a different way.
Since about the turn of the millenium, well-designed sets of standards established by the Web's international standards body, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), have been more fully embraced by the various browser manufacturers.
Clareo is fully committed to creating modern, standards-based Web sites, something that should be a standard part of the Web development industry, but is still rare.
Why Standards?
Web sites that are standards-compliant have a host of benefits for the site owner.
"Future-Proofing"
- Standards-compliant sites have a longer life expectancy, as future standards will be built on existing standards.
Flexibility / Reduced Costs
- Pages are smaller; hosting costs can be reduced where Web hosts charge per character of storage or transmission.
- Maintenance costs are reduced by the separation of content and visual presentation; a hallmark of modern design.
- Separation of content and visual presentation allows the site to be visually consistent, even when edited by multiple individuals.
- The appearance of all pages of a site can be completely changed, often just by changing the contents of a single "style" file.
- The exact same content can automatically display in different form on different devices such as printers and handheld computers/phones. Print any page on this site, or view it with a modern Web-enabled cellular phone to see this in action.
Better Accessibility
- Standards-compliant sites are easier to use by disabled visitors using assistive devices like "screen readers."
- Standards-compliant sites are more easily retrieved by search engines like Google, giving a potential boost in search engine ranking.