Standards

Standards compliance is crucial to any group activity. Imagine what a mess traffic would be if everyone didn't follow the same rules. The Internet also has rules that are set by governing bodies, the most important being the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C. Their rules can be found at http://www.w3.org. It is important to understand two real-world facts about internet standards. (1) There are many standards since they evolve over time. The current standard with which most webpages try to comply is HTML 4.01 transitional. You can test a webpage for compliance at http://validator.w3.org. A new standard has been set for XML technology, which will allow the Internet to expand its capabilities in tying companies together. This new standard is called XHTML 1.0 transitional. (2) Few client browsers follow the standards exactly. During the "browser wars" most observers agree that Netscape and Microsoft broke the standards to try to gain market share. By offering additional features outside the standards and not implementing the true standards, each company hoped to entice users to their application. Unfortunately, this made it very difficult for web design firms since two different versions of the same site had to be written.

XML

With the advent of the XML standard convergence toward this standard is beginning. The new technology allows multiple sites to communicate with each other. To do this they must speak the same language. Zope and CompoundDoc are already using the XHTML standard. CompoundDoc speaks several standards and can give each browser the version of the webpage that it can display.

Handicapped Compliant

Currently, deviation from standards are hardest on the handicapped browsers, which must either read the page to their user or increase the font size. If the page is not standards compliant they have trouble. When a handicapped browser requests a CompoundDoc page it is sent the text-only version. This makes it far friendlier for the user of the page.

WAP Ready

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is dependant on the webpage being 100% XHTML 1.0 basic compliant. If one error is found in the page the WAP browser will often not draw the page at all. This one-error rule is a function of XML that CompoundDoc already speaks.