Outside Looking In - Tech, Design, Games and stuff

Web standards advocates Shari and Aja are looking into forming a group of like minded people — that is, web standard advocates — and I wish them luck in their endeavors. I’ve never been an advocate, although I loathe the use of tables myself, but it’s more of a practical matter: I find divs just easier to code than tds.

[UPDATED - sorry Shari, I had my WP set to auto publish when saving, but I was still writing this when you posted your comment. Please feel free to double post.]

One trepidation I’ve always had with this kind of thing, however, is that often the means become the ends. It reminds me of the old design vs. content tiff in that sense, where both sides seem to forget that good design invariably means having good content, and vice versa. I should know the arguments; I was on more than one side at certain points! Egads. Seeing those sites now is painful, to say the least. Partly because I’ve since lost access to them, and partly because some of those were just downright awful to look at

One thing I have against standards compliant code is that, despite claims otherwise, it’s not easy for most to adjust to, particularly if you’ve gotten used to Imageready’s slice and export. I know some absolutely amazing designers that don’t know their way around code or CSS, and it’s not easy to instill in them a sense of why it’s important for their code to be machine readable as well as pretty to look at. And I can’t really blame them: they design for people, and web standards are, invariably, for machines. Sure they make my coding life easier, but really, until CSS3 comes along and the folks at Microsoft get their act together, is it really worth the hassle?

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec once said: In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature. What is the essential, then, in websites? I would posit: the content. What is a website’s intrinsic nature? To provide said content. Do web standards make the content better?

Let me rephrase that: from a non SEO, purely human standpoint, do web standards make the content better?

I say it doesn’t do a darn thing to the content unless you happen to blog about web standards. But that’s a trick question: in this day and age, is there such a thing as a non SEO, purely human standpoint? There’s not. It’s a problem for today’s blogger that even the way you write titles must be considered for their Digg-ability and Google ranking. Misplaced zeal over the semantic web has taken the focus away from humans, and it’s a problem that can be seen with a lot of blogs that only write about the latest high-paying keyword. And yes, this is the kettle calling the pot black here, because I’ve written more than my fair share of bad content, although I can’t linkbait worth a damn. I don’t like it, but it’s true nonetheless. The ends and the means have been confused and mixed up too much. To borrow from Richard Lovelace, SEO practices do not a good website make, nor standards compliance good content. Content makes content makes content.

But it does make for an easier time writing. The success of Blogger and Wordpress are proof of that. And there is a certain quality to quantity. I just can’t help but notice the blogs with nothing really unique, relevant or personal to say, but instead contain a dozen links per post to, you guessed it, keywords. The net effect is that weak content has actually grown in proportion to good content.

Am I blurring the lines between SEO and standards compliance? Yes I am, but with good reason. The two go hand in hand; after all, isn’t good SERP placement one of the selling points of the semantic web? SEO sells, and standards compliant code is one of the best (white hat) SEO practices out there.

That said, I think the semantic web is a good thing. I applaud the initiative of people like Aja and Shari, precisely because their sites are good examples of a successful marriage between good content and standards compliance. They are role models, if you will, and while they are not alone, they are still too few. That’s why I support what they want to do, because I think it’s a good start towards a better web. For machines and humans.