Standards, Guidelines, & Patterns
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Standards
Benefits and ROI (Why Standards?)
- Better Control and Cost Savings with Style Sheets - Robert Nyman
- Built Like a House - Mike Cherim
- Buy Standards Compliant Web Sites - Dominique Hazael-Massieux
- CSS Based Design - Jeremy Keith
- Evangelizing Outside the Box: Web Standards and Big Companies - Peter-Paul Koch
- My Web site is standard! And yours? - Karl Dubost
- Standards Savings - Eric A. Meyer
- Ten Reasons to Learn and Use Web Standards - Roger Johansson
- The Benefits of Web Standards to Your Visitors, Your Clients, and You! - Russ Weakley
- The Need for Web Design Standards - Jakob Nielsen
- Turning the Tables, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Web Standards - Drew McLellan
- Web Pages Aren't Printed on Paper - John Allsopp
- Web Standards for Skeptics - Michael Montgomery
- Whatever For...So, why bother? - Owen Briggs
- Why Standards? - Jim Waldo
Case Studies and Examples
- Canadian election Web sites flunk standards test - Joe Clark
- Design sites do Web standards. Or rather, they don't do Web standards, either - Joe Clark
- ESPN redesigns with web standards - Jeffery Zeldman
- From Table Hacks to CSS Layout: A Web Designer's Journey - Jeffrey Zeldman
- Party like it's 1997: Microsoft has redesigned - Jeffrey Zeldman
- Rebuilding a Site With Standards - Eric A. Meyer
- Worst Redesign of the Year - Joe Clark
Comprehensive Sites
- The Access Board - This is the official home of Section 508 provisions of the standards. The full set of their requirements is available at this site in the document
- U.S. Web Design Standards - Standards USA
- W3C - It is the authoritative source for web standards.
- Web Standards: The What, The Why, And The How - Amy Dickens
Definitions and Overviews
- How to Grok Web Standards - Craig Cook
- Information Technology - Document description and processing languages - HyperText Markup Language - ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission)
- Raise Your Standards - Molly E. Holzschlag
- Spelling and Grammar not the Same - Jeffery Zeldman
- The Meaning of Web Standards - Derek Featherstone
- What Are Web Standards? (Video) - Jeffrey Zeldman
- What is a Good Standard? An essay on W3C's design principles - Bert Bos
Education and Professionalism
- A Call for Education: How Do We Educate the Web Standards Kids? - Chris Mills
- A Proper Web Standards Education: Part 1 - Chris Mills
- Acting locally (Draft): Challenges in Web Standards Evangelism - Tristan Nitot
- Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group Charter - W3C
Semantics
- Back to School - Semantic Markup Review - Harshala Bhandari
- Borderline Semantics/Crossing the Line - Niels Matthijs
- Conversational Semantics - Aaron Gustafson
- Categories of Semantics - Joe Clark
- Emergent Semantics - Eric A. Meyer
- Fake HTML is Always Semantic - Virginia DeBolt
- How Important Is Semantic HTML? - Steven Bradley
- HTML5 Semantics - Bruce Lawson
- HTML5 Semantics and Accessibility - Steve Faulkner
- It's OK to Use Tables - Adrian Roselli
- Listening to the Web, Part Two: It's All Semantics - Scott Vinkle
- Let's Talk about Semantics - Mike Robinson
- Lynx Would Not be Impressed - on Semantics and HTML - Christian Heilmann
- Markup, Namespaces, and Meaning - Tim Bray
- My Thing About the Thing That Thing Wrote About Thing - John Foliot
- Pursuing Semantic Value - Jeremy Keith
- Pursuing Semantic Value - Jeremy Keith
- Semantic Brevity - Jeremy Keith
- Semantics By Robert Nyman
- Semantic Data Extractor - W3C
- Semantic Formatting for Interviews - Joe Dolson
- Semantics in Practice and Mapping Semantic Value to its Consumers - Paul Irish
- Semantics in Web Development - Dean Leigh
- Semantics, Standards, Accessibility.. - Bruce Lawson
- Standards Don’t Necessarily Have Anything to do with Being Semantically Correct - Jason Kottke
- The Practical Value of Semantic HTML - Bruce Lawson
- Understanding Semantics - Léonie Watson
- Understanding Why Semantic HTML is Important, as Told by TypeScript - Mandy Michael
- Why Use Semantic HTML? - Joe Dolson
Separation
- Components and Concerns - Jeremy Keith
- Gotta Keep 'em Separated - Jeremy Keith
- Really Separated? - Doug Bowman
- Separation: The Web Designer's Dilemma - Michael Cohen
- The Document Triangle - Peter J. Bogaards
- The Incomplete Divorce - Eric A. Meyer
- The Web Is Ruined and I ruined it - David Siegel
- Three Separated Layers, Capisce? - Robert Nyman
Structure
- 3.5 Use header elements to convey document structure - W3C
- Browser Support for New HTML5 Structural Elements - Virginia DeBolt
- Semantic Structure - Paul R. Bohman
- The Structure of Accessible Pages - Joe Clark
- Thoughts About HTML5 Structural Elements - Steven Bradley
- Use <h1> for top-level heading - W3C
- Use headings to structure your document - W3C
- Use Structural Markup - Andrew B. King
Tag Soup
- 12 Principles For Keeping Your Code Clean - Chris Coyier
- Keep it Clean - Your Blog and Clean HTML - Virginia DeBolt
- No Good Can Come of Bad Code - Jeffery Zeldman
- Stop Writing Garbage Code, Please - Mike Cherim
- Redefining Tag Soup - Faruk Ates
- The Elements of Meaningful XHTML - Tantek Celik
Validation
- 2% of the Top 100 U.S. Websites Use Valid HTML (in 2021) - Jens Oliver Meiert
- 3.2 - Create documents that validate to published formal grammars
- Ampersands and Validation - Roger Johansson
- Ampersands, PHP Sessions and Valid HTML - David Dorward
- Beyond Validation - Joe Dolson
- Clean Compliant HTML Code vs Cost of Non Compliant HTML Code - S. R. Emerson
- Comments on W3C TAG EME - Henri Sivonen
- CSS Validator Colour Warnings are not Errors - Roger Johansson
- Help! My CSS Isn't Working! - Eric A. Meyer
- HTML5 - Check it Before you Wreck it with Mike[tm] Smith - Steve Faulkner
- Influence of Valid Code on Screen Readers - Joe Clark
- Invalid HTML Interfering with Accessibility - Alastair Campbell
- Knowing When to Break the Rules - Derek Featherstone
- Scripting Away Validation Concerns - Gez Lemon
- Short Note on HTML Conformance Checking - Steve Faulkner
- The 3-Second Frontend Developer Test - Jens Oliver Meiert
- Understanding HTML5 Validation - Louis Lazaris
- Valid
garbage in, valid garbage out - Ian Hickson
- The Quiz- Ian Hickson
- Validating HTML5 Documents - Louis Lazaris
- Validation: Does It Matter? - Owen Briggs
- Validation Matters - Roger Johansson
- Validity and Accessibility - Gez Lemon
- Validity and Accessibility - Web Accessibility Initative
- HTML Validation with ARIA - Michael Cooper
- Sweetness Follows? - David Sloan
- WCAG 2.2 and Validation (2023) - Rohan Kumar
- Web Standards Test: Top 100 Sites - Jeffrey Zeldman
- Where Our Standards Went Wrong - Ethan Marcotte
- Why Validate? - W3C
Related Standards Info
- A Short History of WaSP and Why Web Standards Matter - Jason Hoffman
- An Essay on W3C's Design Principles - Bert Bos, March 6, 2003
- Application Foundations for the Open Web Platform - Jeff Jaffe
- All of This Has Happened Before and Will Happen Again - Adrian Roselli
- Blue Beanie Day 2021 - Jeffrey Zeldman
- Blue Beanie Day: Celebrate Web Standards on November 30 - Deborah Edwards-Onoro
- Bluffers' Guide To ISO 9241 - David Travis
- Celebrating Web Standards on Blue Beanie Day, November 30 - Deborah Edwards-Oñoro
- Complementing Standards by Demonstrating Commitment and Progress - Sarah Horton, David Sloan, and Henny Swan
- Consensus in Internet Standards (2024) - Mark Nottingham
- How Are Web Standards Born? & Happy Blue Beanie Day! (Video) - Eric Eggert
- IE: RIP or BRB? (Video) - Bruce Lawson
- Know Your Standards - Steve Faulkner
- Of Patterns and Power - Web Standards Then and Now - Jeffrey Zeldman
- On the 55th World Standards Day, My History of the Web and Relationship With W3C (2024) - Coralie Mercier
- Opening Standards - Doug Schepers
- Semi-Annual Reminder to Learn and Hire for Web Standards (2024) - Adrian Roselli
- The Friction of Web Standards (Video) - Eric A. Meyer
- The (Other) Web We Lost - John Allsopp
- The Web Platform Is Back - Bertrand Delacretaz
- The Web Stack - Eric Meyer
- Tour of the Sausage Factory (Video) - Bruce Lawson
- Web Standards: Does Anyone Actually Care? (Video) (2023) - Michael R. Lorek
- World Wide Accessibility - Benefits of Standardization (2024) - Bogdan Cerovac
Guidelines and Best Practices
- A Web Standards Checklist - Russ Weakley
- Developing With Web Standards Recommendations and Best Practices - Roger Johansson
- First Principles - Bruce Tognazzini
- Guidelines for Authoring - W3C
- Quality Tips for Webmasters - W3C
- Research Based Web Design and Usability Guidleines - Usability.gov
- Report: Current State and Roadmap of Standards for Web Applications on Mobile - W3C
- Status of ISO 9241 - User Focus
- Style Guide Best Practices - Brad Frost
- The Matrix of W3C Specifications - W3C
- Web Accessibility Principles - WebAIM
- When Guidelines Should Be Descriptive or Prescriptive - Jens Meiert
- Yale Web Style Guide - Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton
Patterns
- 12 Standard Screen Patterns - Luke Wroblewski
- A Pattern Language for User Interface Design - Todd Coram and Jim Lee
- An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design - Ryan Singer
- Architectural Design Patterns for XML Documents - Kyle Downey
- Can Object Oriented Principles Be Applied To Web Design? - Steven Bradley
- Experiences - A Pattern Language for User Interface Design - Todd Coram and Jim Lee
- Interaction Design Patterns - Martijn van Welie
- Interaction Pattern - Tom Erickson
- Patterns of Hypertext - Mark Bernstein
- Patterns for Personal Web Sites - Mark L. Irons
- The Interaction Design Patterns Page - Tom Erickson