Designing with Web Standards
If you're not a technical person, you might be thinking, what are standards? If you are a technical person, and have surfed the Internet for more than a little while, you might
The Web has been a pretty wild place over the last 12 or so years of its public existence, in more ways than one. For a web site designer, it's been a real challenge to make a site look good on all, or even some of, the many web browsers in use. For a disabled user of the Web, some sites are a challenge to view at all. Oftentimes the techniques a designer uses to make a site look good, makes it inaccessible to disabled users. Sometimes, attempts to make a site accessible ends up making them look boring.
Standards can help with all of these issues. There's no reason to put up with sites that are not at once good looking, accessible, and look good in the vast majority of browsers in use today. I understand the standards, and use them in the sites I develop
Developing with Best Practices
Related closely with standards, is the concept of best practices. A lot of smart people have been designing web sites for a long time, from the days before standards were widely used, until now; when, finally, standards seem to be becoming the norm rather than the exception. They know from harsh experience what are the best ways to design and develop web sites. I am constantly reading and keeping myself up-to-date with the techniques that are considered the best ways to design and develop web sites.
Best Practices for Software
I specialize in Perl software development. And in that endeavor also, I keep informed of the techniques and technologies that have been shown to be superior.