The Internet Police, Part Last

The point of KompoZer, in my view, is to allow novice web authors to express themselves on the web. KompoZer is a learning tool as well as a web authoring tool. KompoZer, a follow on to Nvu, is an open source, WYSIWYG HTML editor, Two things I consider important are that novices get this free download and the encouragement of experienced web authors.

This series of posts had messages for both groups. The main issue is whether we should use tables to control layout of our content.

Part One of the series notes that 32% of web sites, maybe more, use tables rather than Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to format content. These are not novice sites but major sites with thousands of pages.

Part Two continued to chide those experienced web authors who bully novice authors about tables. The post acknowledges that CSS is the way W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, would have us create web pages. W3C says: "Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. …To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables." The counterpoint was that by using KompoZer and a little planning even novice web authors could avoid pitfalls to produce valid, accessible table layouts.

In Part Three the discussion turns to validation. I said throughout the series that we novice authors need to be responsible and producing valid code is part of that process. The other part of being responsible is to make sure public sites are accessible to all. That too can be done with tables.

You will probably hear some accessibility advocates say that layout tables are a bad idea, and that CSS layout techniques ought to be used instead. There is truth in what they say, but, to be honest, using tables for layout is not the worst thing that you could do in terms of accessibility. WebAIM

Community Standards

The title “Internet Police” was my reaction to support forum bullies who berate novices for not mastering CSS. My plan was to say simply that there are no Internet police, web authors are not put in jail for using tables, so build your pages and enjoy. That may be more true than false but is not the complete story.

Reading and research made it clear the WW Web is not the Wild West Web. Lawlessness does not prevail. There are standards and conventions that provide order to make the whole thing work. There needs to be rules so browsers can view the work of web authors as the author intended.

Years ago we were glad to see Microsoft take on the Goliath of the day, IBM. IBM dominated the computer market and looked down their long, arrogant snouts at anyone who thought differently. Microsoft did wonderful things and made it possible for complete novices to own and operate computers. It was a wonderful thing.

Organizations with dominant positions tend to develop long, arrogant snouts. One could argue that Mozilla with the success of Firefox took a major leap to snoutdom by trying to dump Thunderbird. Clearly Microsoft now has such a snout that entire governments have turned on them.

Microsoft is probably the reason that, after nearly a decade, W3C standards have not been fully implemented. They are getting closer so W3C has done a good thing by establishing standards for the Internet community. Even though W3C snouts are lengthening they work through consensus rather than bullying.

The Real Enforcers

When she got caught doing something Geraldine Jones offered the defense, “The devil made me do it.” I don’t mean to offer the devil defense by saying that big sites use tables or that Internet Explorer doesn’t meet W3C standards so little-ole me is off the hook. Fact is, even the big guys are not of the hook.

Most of us novice authors will stay under the radar with grandson and pet malamute sites even if we do wrong. Target is in the cross hairs because their commercial site is not accessible. That case may have a major impact on the way commercial sites are done and may ultimately impact us all. If your site is commercial you need to make sure it is accessible. The folks with the longest snouts are lawyers.

There are lots of reasons for including accessibility into your business plans. The best reason is that accessible products and accessible web sites are just plain good for business. With accessible sites and products you have the opportunity for more customers. For the web, your site will likely work better on a range of devices and result in better indexing by search engines. Accessibility is the right thing to do. Jim Thatcher

Search Engine Clout

Lawyers may not come after you but if you want your site to be noticed by search engines it needs to be done “right.” HTML compliant and accessible pages provide better search engine optimization. If your site is not properly constructed search engines will not give you a favorable ranking.

You can test your pages at sitening.com to see how well they conform to standards. I tested some of my web site-like pages and got failing scores of 55% or less. This blog earns a 65 which is an “OK” rating but nothing to write home about. Microsoft’s page for Office uses tables for the layout and scores 45/100. By contrast the KompoZer site got passing scores of 75% or more. The KompoZer site now uses CSS for layout.

The rating tool is pretty cool and looks at Semantic Structure, Page Content, Obsolete & Deprecated HTML, Inline Styles, Download Size/Time, Head Content, Outgoing Links. You earn or lose points in each category. My pages were dinged for depreciated HTML and the use of in-line styles. I earned no points for CSS but was OK on page content (i.e. mission accomplished).

Learn by Doing

I’m better informed than I was when I first made the assertion, “There are no Internet Police.” I hope that if you followed the logic and the links in this series you are better informed as well. I still think KompoZer is a great learning tool for novice web authors. You should join more than 100,000 people who downloaded a free copy this month and get started on your web site. You can learn to do it right. If you do it “not right” you won’t go to jail.

Wysi
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