Simon Willison’s Weblog

More practical benefits of web standards

15th June 2003

D. Keith Robinson recently launched the redesigned website for the Washington State Drowning Prevention Network. He has written a fascinating account of the development process used for the site, which validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and uses CSS for layout. The following extract in particular caught my eye:

These major changes and layout tweaks were done in under an hour. Because I’d built the site with Web standards they were easy. Really easy. The actual content changes were a snap because the code was so stripped down and clean and all the layout changes were done within the CSS file. Without that the layout changes alone would have easily taken half a day even using sketchy “find and replace” methods on the 34 pages of the site.

The stakeholders were ecstatic, I was relieved and the site launched on time. A Web standards success story, and that is just the beginning. Wait until the next time this site needs a major rework. It will be a piece of cake and I’ll look like a superstar. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?