What are the Internet 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." WME codes to the more rigorous "XHTML 1.0 strict" standard.
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.