Today’s market is filled with numerous website developers, but sad to say, not all of them are professional in the services they offer. A professional web developer is one who adheres to the guidelines and standards that are stipulated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The purpose of W3C is to ensure that computers around the globe correspond or communicate in one language and that irrespective of the web browser used, web pages would still appear the same.
There are plenty of web browsers available today, some of which are Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. All of these platforms differ in the way they render HTML codes. If a website has code incompatibility, it will fail to function in either one or more of these web browsers. It is therefore crucial for a website to be compatible across multiple browsers through the use of a valid, standardized code if it is to achieve a greater degree of user-friendliness and accessibility. It is the task of a web developer or web programmer to adhere to the W3C set of web guidelines while creating or developing websites, especially those that are expected to be interactive or dynamic.
Before hiring a web developer, it is important that you first determine their level of professionalism by looking into their resume, portfolio, and previous customer reviews, just to mention a few. If a developer is able to fully create a website in CSS, then he or she is worth hiring to carry out the expected job. This is because he or she will be able to standardize your website across multiple platforms, which is important since most website development technologies are mutually dependent.
Website HTML codes may effectively work in some web browsers, but crash in others. As a result, many web development forums have been initiated to educate web designers, developers, and programmers on how to validate a website’s code across multiple major browsers. This also includes compatibility on other devices apart from PCs such as mobile phones and PDAs. This is because many users are currently accessing the internet on these devices. It is therefore important that any web development and design company educate their designers on W3C guidelines, if they are to remain relevant in today’s competitive market.
Another reason why it is important for every web developer or designer to adhere to W3C guidelines on HTML code validation is that there is no HTML editor that is able to create codes that are fully compatible across all platforms. For example, Microsoft FrontPage editor creates codes that are valid only in Internet Explorer. As such, it is easily out beaten by other editors such as Adobe Dreamweaver, which also fail at a certain point. Even for professionals who use “hand-coding” in HTML development, this still does not result in 100% code compatibility.
This leaves one thing clear-it is important that every web development project follow the standardization guidelines provided by W3C to ensure better usability across multiple browsers.