Genii Weblog

We are going standards-crazy

Mon 5 Apr 2004, 09:55 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
Ahh, doesn't the mere word give you palpitations?  Well, in honor of the reckless pursuit of standards, I am working to make sure that GeniiSoft.com follows standards, lots of them.  Specifically, if our Midas Rich Text LSX can generate valid, accessible HTML, our website should be able to use valid, accessible HTML.  I started the process with the W3C HTML Validator.  The old website had problems - a bunch of problems, but with a bit of work, I eliminated them all, and now our main website page is officially valid, with HTML 4.01 Transitional.
Valid HTML 4.01!
 
Feels good.  I am having a bit of trouble with the other pages, since the validator objects to the <noscript> tag, although I can't figure out exactly why.  They should all be valid fairly soon.  The next step is WAI - the Web Accessibility Initiative standard.  This is tougher, since almost everything is up to the user to decide.  I tried out Bobby as well, which is a great tool, but again, accessibility is more of a goal than a standard.
 
So, on to other standards.  Why, you ask?  Don't ask?  Haven't you been listening?  J2EE.  XML.  Java.  Standards are where it's at.  Standards are the cats meow.  Without standards, we would be... individuals.  Oh, well, never mind that.
 
Next standard, Atom feed validation.  What is an Atom feed?  See here.  Wow, that was easy.
[Valid Atom]
 
Man, we are on a roll.  OK, who has another validation to try out?  C'mon, bring 'em on.

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


141.1. Christopher Byrne (04/16/2004 08:03 AM)

508 Approved:-)

Unfortunately, this one is more than a "goal" for people selling to the government...


141.2. Ben Langhinrichs (04/16/2004 08:49 AM)

Perhaps I didn't say it well. We sell to lots of government agencies, so I know the rules, but the WAI and Section 508 guidelines contain way too many manual checks to make it easy to say for certain that a page is "standards compliant".