The Wikipedia article on Standards in software contains a very good definition of standards, particularly as we might need to view them when talking about web standards: Standards (software) Software standards enable software to interoperate. Many things are (somewhat) arbitrary, so the important thing is that everyone agree on what they are. Software standards is one of the Unsolved problems in software engineering On the whole, the article at Wikipedia is a good example of what isn’t so great about […]
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Why the DOCTYPE switch isn’t broken
(Or, more accurately, why the DOCTYPE is no more broken than any other potential switching mechanism.) In a recent article, “Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8“, Aaron Gustafson states that “the DOCTYPE [is] unsustainable as a switch for standards mode.” His argument is based on the problem that many developers and authoring tools now make use of correct DOCTYPEs despite the fact that they are not in fact using standards-based, valid code. Therefore, you can not actually assume […]
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