Q. Why does F5 Design use Web Standards?
A. To save you money.

Developing websites without Web Standards takes longer and hence costs more. Maintaining these sites takes longer and hence costs more. Loading these sites takes longer and hence costs more in terms of lost customers. Notice a pattern emerging?

What are Web Standards?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international industry consortium dedicated to developing de facto standards on the web. These standards, such as XHTML & CSS, are used in writing web pages.

Web Standards separate content from presentation. XHTML contains all the textual content and can be viewed by PDAs, Screen Readers, Search Engines as well as web browsers. CSS contains all the presentation rules that are used by web browsers to 'present the design'.

Real World Benefits

  • Faster Pages
    'Pre Web Standards' pages mix presentational code in with your content making for 'bloated' pages often including unnecessary images.
  • Faster Development
    A '1 page fits all browsers' approach is quicker to develop.
  • Faster Maintenance
    Separating presentational rules from content allows for these rules to be easily changed.
  • Better Search Engine Optimisation
    Removing presentational 'tags' from the content helps Search engine 'spiders' index your site.
  • Better Usability
    XHTML content can be viewed in any browser, including mobile phones, PDAs, and Screen Readers.
  • Better Accessibility
    Allowing all users of your site equal access is good for business as it extends your customer reach. Users with disabilities may be using Screen Reader software that speaks your site. 'Pre Web Standards' pages make this much harder/impossible to use.

It's not just us saying this ...

Glossary of Terms

CSS
Cascading Style Sheet - Defines the presentation of content (e.g. size, colour, font) on a Web page.
PDA
Personal Digital Assistant - a handheld computing device.
Screen Reader
A screen reader interprets content into a different format, e.g. speech or electronic Braille.
Search Engine
A facility that allows users to search and retrieve specific information from the World Wide Web, e.g. Google
Spider
Software that scans web pages and adds them to an index by following links.
Web Browser
Software that allows you to access web pages on the Internet, e.g. Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
XHTML
Extensible Hypertext Markup Language - used to markup content for web pages.

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