Download our Site Template and Make the Leap to XHTML and CSS2  

If you face a Web site redesign or need a head start on your development efforts, our free Dreamweaver MX XHTML and CSS2 template may come in handy. Download the template and see how XHTML and CSS2 can reduce coding time and increase site accessibility.

Morton, Shawn. TechRepublic (2003). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Draft 2 of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

It's time to take a look at the working draft of WCAG 2.0. You'll see a fresh approach to a formidable challenge.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2005). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Dreamweaver Task Force

The WaSP Dreamweaver Task Force was created in 2001 to accomplish two tasks of vital importance: To work with Macromedia’s engineers to improve the standards compliance and accessibility of web pages produced with Macromedia Dreamweaver, the market-leading professional visual web editor and development tool. Detailed objectives are listed below. This part of the group’s mission was largely fulfilled with the release in May 2002 of Dreamweaver MX, though the Task Force will continue to work with Macromedia as the company fine-tunes subsequent versions of its product. To communicate effectively within the online Dreamweaver community, raising awareness of web standards and helping others discover how their tools can be used to create standards-compliant, accessible sites. This work will continue indefinitely and is a key component of WaSP’s developer education outreach program.

Web Standards Project. Organizations>Web Design>Standards>Dreamweaver

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global workshops, conferences, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices.

Dublin Core. Organizations>Information Design>Standards>Metadata

Dynamic Content with DOM-2 (Part I)

The relatively recent emergence of peer-to-peer distributed computing and the renewed interest in real-time data exchange have stoked the embers of a hot topic: displaying dynamic content over the Web. Unfortunately, the statelessness of HTTP and the limitations of the rendering components of different browsers present significant challenges to web developers wishing to get fresh information to the client without sending additional requests to a server.

Apple Inc. (2006). Design>Web Design>Standards

Dynamic Content with DOM-2 (Part II)

This article dives into the JavaScript node interface and examines the different ways of altering the visible properties of an element or text node. You’ll first learn how to alter element attributes with DOM element methods, then you’ll see how to change an element’s style properties through the DOM Level 2 (DOM2) Style specification interface.

Apple Inc. (2006). Design>Web Design>Standards

Electronic Common Technical Document

The specifications for creating the eCTD Backbone Files and Study Tagging Files (techncal documents that follow the eCTD Specifications).

U.S. Federal Drug Administration (2006). Resources>Documentation>Standards

Evangelizing Outside the Box: Web Standards and Large Companies

Contrary to popular belief, designers and developers at many big companies use web standards in their work every day. They just don't talk about it. For standards awareness to reach the next level, they'll have to start talking.

Koch, Peter-Paul. List Apart, A (2007). Design>Web Design>Standards

Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines

'Use a Search Box instead of a link to a Search page.' This is one guideline from the plethora of recently created usability guidelines to help designers produce more usable web sites. It makes sense. After all, there are more than 42 million web sites on the Internet. It should be simple to study these sites and put together a list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that, when followed, will produce easy-to-use sites. But...

Spool, Jared M. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Standards>Web Design

Evolving User Interface Standards

Every software development team either hires a UI specialist or consults an expert to design the next best killer application. As more and more users log onto the net, user base tends to grow and new technologies evolve, web developers and designers are left with very little time to cope up with new techniques in user interface. Thus a new wave of User Interface issues has occurred in the software development life cycle.

Sarjapur, Harsha. uiGarden (2006). Design>User Interface>Standards

Examining the Role of De Facto Standards on the Web

Just what are the design practices on the web that have the highest frequency? And are there design practices that all (or nearly all) sites employ?

Adkisson, Heidi P. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Standards>E Commerce

Experience Strangeglobe: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the W3C

Can the mysterious Dr Strangeglobe save the WWWorld from a conspiracy to contaminate our precious liquid layouts? Erika Meyer takes a non-standard look at the W3C in this charming yet educational spoof of the Kubrick classic.

Meyer, Erika. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Standards

Extending XHTML: Target and Strict

That the target attribute is not by default allowed in valid XHTML 1.1 or XHTML 1.0 Strict continues to be a source of frustration for designers. It simply doesn't have to be.

Burkett, Wayne. Dionidium (2004). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Figure Microformats

An image, a caption and the image credit. That can't be hard to get the associations right, can it? Delve into the discussion about markup, semantics and microformats of a seemingly simple issue.

Willerich, Matthias. Content with Style (2007). Articles>Information Design>Standards>HTML

Firefox 3: The Webmasters Portal to the Internet

So now, you have absolutely no excuse! Firefox’s newest release, version 3, takes everyone’s favorite open source web browser to a level unparalleled by any of the competition. While Firefox has always been the browser of choice for most web developers, designers, and internet geeks, the new features have taken it to a completely different level for user experience. So you’re a web developer or graphic designer and don’t use Firefox? Why not? Firefox makes being a webmaster much less of a chore. With hundreds of useful extensions, Firefox allows webmasters to customize their browser to meet their needs. Need some examples? Here’s a few I use on a daily basis.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Firefox Spread Leads to Design Scrutiny, Built-In RSS Feeds

Are the browser wars back? As Firefox and Netscape gain steam, site designers can avoid losing users by focusing on Web standards. Plus, built-in RSS is here -- warts and all.

Glaser, Mark. Online Journalism Review (2005). Articles>Web Design>Standards

Five Questions to Ask Your Web Development Team

As a client or manager responsible for a web development project you don't need to know anything about how a standards based web site is created. However you do need to know that your project is addressing these five important issues.

Allsopp, John. Western Civilization (2005). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Standards

Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE

Per HTML and XHTML standards, a DOCTYPE (short for “document type declaration”) informs the validator which version of (X)HTML you’re using, and must appear at the very top of every web page. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won’t validate without them.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

"Forgiving" Browsers Considered Harmful

Current browsers are very forgiving; they quietly correct or gloss over many common HTML errors. This makes it easy for people to experience the joy of creating their own web pages with a minimum of frustration—if a page displays correctly, then it's “right.” Unfortunately, by hiding the need for structure that the web will require as it moves towards XHTML and XML, these forgiving browsers have helped create a world of structural HTML illiterates. As long as browsers continue to parse and display HTML that isn't well-formed or valid, we will never learn the right ways, and we will never get to a structural web.

Eisenberg, J. David. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Format Comparison Between ODF and MS XML

There has been a lot of attention to the legal encumbrances in Microsoft's new MS XML format. In this article we'll look at the technical side, and try to show you how the design of these formats affect interoperability. After all, that is the purpose of open standards.

Hudson, Alex, J. David Eisenberg, Bruce D'Arcus and Daniel Carrera. Groklaw (2005). Articles>Information Design>Standards>Microsoft Word

Get Going With DocBook

A tutorial on writing documentation that will be used in a particular project.

Galassi, Mark. Galassi.org (1998). Articles>Documentation>Standards>DocBook

Get on Board the XML Train

The next century will be an XML century, make no mistake about it. All our documents, even checks, credit card slips, personal letters, recipes, technical documents, everything, will benefit from XML technologies. Students are already learning XML in schools, and big businesses are using it to publish their databases on the web. The appearance of the electronic spreadsheet ten years ago changed the way we do business. XML will change the way we write documents.

DuBay, William H. Impact Information (1999). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Getting Creative With Specs: Usable Software Specifications

Building architects don’t have to think much about what the actual deliverables are to contractors and their clients, because their industry has traditions and standards for blueprints, balsa wood models, and computer-generated renderings. As user interface consultants, we have to think about this anew for every project.

Krause, Brian R. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Project Management>Standards

Getting Started with SGML/XML

This chapter is intended to provide a quick introduction to structured markup (SGML and XML). If you're already familiar with SGML or XML, you only need to skim this chapter. To work with DocBook, you need to understand a few basic concepts of structured editing in general, and DocBook, in particular. That's covered here. You also need some concrete experience with the way a DocBook document is structured.

Walsh, Norman and Leonard Muellner. O'Reilly and Associates (1999). Articles>Documentation>Standards>XML

Governing Good Web Site Design

Looking for a means to judge the quality of a web design? A good place to start is with the US Federal Government, which provides more than 175 research-based guidelines.

Janisch, Troy. Icon Interactive (2004). Articles>Internet>Web Design>Standards