Web Standards - World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The World Wide Web
Consortium is an independent international organisation responsible for the development
of specifications, guidelines, software and tools with the aim of growing the Web to its full potential.
W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines.
How does W3C affect your website?
When a visitor visits your website they request a web page using a web browser. This could be from
a personal computer, web based telephone or other internet based device such as web tv. The web server
sends the page in the form of a text file to the web browser which interprets the code according to certain
rules. The page is then laid out for the visitor to view according to those rules. The appearance of your web
page will be different according to the platform on which it is being viewed.
As W3C are responsible for the development of most widely accepted web standards, new browsers
like Internet Explorer, are written to have rules which are compliant with those guidelines. By ensuring that
your website code adheres to W3C standards you maximise the chances of your website being viewed by visitors
as it is intended.
How do TNC apply W3C Standards?
TNC, when designing and developing a new website, ensure that the website code complies with W3C standards
whereever possible. For example, W3C currently recommend that tables should only be used for the layout of data
and should not be used to enhance design, through page layout. At TNC we use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to
control page layout, not tables and thereby we are conforming to W3C's recommendations. Note that it is common
for web design companies to use tables in their page layout. The reason why they should not do this (other than
the fact that they are not meeting W3C standards) is that the inappropriate use of tables makes it difficult for text readers to interpret
the code within the website. The impact of this is that some visitors may have difficulty accessing your website.