W3C and CSS Validation

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was established in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the Internet. The main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3), it's proclaimed mission is, "To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the web".

W3C has multiple headquarters at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) in the USA, ERCIM in France, Keio University in Japan and many other offices around the world. It is set up as a consortium, ambitiously pursuing its mission through the creation of web standards and guidelines. W3C has published more than 110 standards, called W3C Recommendations. W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the web. In order for the web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the web to work together. Publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus web fragmentation.

In addition, W3C's global initiatives also include nurturing relationships with national, regional and international organizations. These contacts help W3C maintain a culture of international participation in the development of the World Wide Web. W3C co-ordinates particularly closely with other organizations that are developing standards for the web or Internet in order to enable clear progress. This is a fundamental part of W3's firm belief that web technologies must be compatible with one another, regardless of manufacturer or programmer. W3C refers to this goal as 'web interoperability'.

Among the many technological specifications maintained and validated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are those for .css. or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Cascading Style Sheets were developed as a means for creating a consistent approach to providing style information for web documents and came to prominence as purely HTML-based sites became more complex to write and maintain. Browser incompatibilities made consistent site appearance difficult, and users had less control over how web content was displayed.

To add an element of conformity and to improve the capabilities of web presentation, the W3C are adding work on CSS to the deliverables of the HTML editorial review board (ERB). They published CSS level 1 Recommendation in December of 1994. Their CSS Working Group began tackling issues that had not been addressed with CSS level 1, resulting in the creation of CSS level 2 in November 1997, published as a W3C Recommendation May 1998. CSS level 3, which was started in 1998, is still under development as of 2008.

In 2005 the CSS Working Groups decided to enforce the requirements for standards more strictly. This meant that already published standards like CSS 2.1, CSS 3 Selectors and CSS 3 Text were pulled back from 'Candidate Recommendation' to 'Working Draft' level.

There are numerous reasons why organisations including SEO Consult choose to develop using CSS, and why validation is an important aspect of that development.

1. Separate content from presentation. An external style sheet can contain all the styles for your web site. If you want to change the content you only have to edit one style sheet. This is particularly useful for sites containing hundreds or thousands of pages and sites built on content management systems.

2. SEO benefits. Search Engines tend to weight content towards the top of HTML documents and search engines spider the content that comes first in your source code. CSS can be easily structured so that the SEO relevant content takes priority.

3. Pages load faster. Tables slow down page load times. If tables are nested pages will load even slower. CSS-based web pages are far quicker because the styles are all contained in one style sheet.

4. Small file size. CSS reduces html document file size, also helping to reduce load times.

5. Good housekeeping. CSS eliminates rogue code, making site code neater and cleaner. Editing that code is also easier.

6. Accessibility. CSS2's aural properties provide information to non-sighted users and voice-browser users. The CSS2 'media types' allow authors and users to design style sheets that will cause documents to render more appropriately for certain devices such as Braille, speech synthesizers, or text telephone (tty) devices.

7. Cost Savings through re-use. CSS can shorten the project development timescales through style sheet re-use using only minor modifications.

8. Flexibility of design. You can use pixel precision in your website designs. By adjusting the margins and padding of the CSS you can easily adjust the position of your content. You can also create very modern designs that can't be duplicated with tables. For example, you can use a background image for a header then place your content over it using the H1 tag for better page optimization.

9. Accessibility. The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide them any service that it provides to members of the public. The web accessibility features of CSS not only allow the integration of accessible design but future-proof development against additional legislation.

10. Print friendly. When a user chooses to print a web page an alternative CSS document can be called up. This document can specify that formatting, images and navigation disappear and just the page content appears on the printed version.

It's the CSS which gives this website its look. All colours, fonts and layouts are controlled by CSS and the code that makes CSS needs to be written properly in accordance with the W3 recommended CSS specifications. Validation ensures this and indicates whether there are any errors in the code.

A CSS validated website will appear visually more consistent in modern browsers. With tens of millions of mobile devices likely to be sold worldwide this year, we are extremely keen to make content easily accessible to in-car browsers, WebTV, Lynx browsers, Screenreaders and PDAs. If there are errors in the CSS then the website may not display properly. This will make it difficult to read or even access.