Why I Obsess Over Web Standards

By Author: Larry Tang
Total Articles: 512
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I was recently reading an article on how Microsoft dropped the ball on developers and why several of them started to switch over to MAC OS X. Then I realized that the problem with Microsoft is that it represents the global large corporate mentality, mediocrity and lack of innovations. This is why Google is #1 and this is why no matter how much money a large company throws at the small competition, they can't keep up.

It's no secret that I'm no big fan of Microsoft, but I didn't always dislike them. The first computer I ever used was an Apple, back in 1992 in elementary school. Fast forward a couple of years to Windows 3.1and the first computer my parent's bought for our family was a PC. I was fascinated with it. You can press a button, click here and there and blam; things would happen.

Then we got AOL, and oh man, I remember thinking, This is great, all the information of the world at my finger tips. This was around 1995, and I recall thinking, This internet thing, it could change the way the world communicates forever.

I guess I was right, but there was a problem when I attempted to download the Internet ...
... Browser, it wouldn't let me download it for some reason. A couple of months later, after an AOL upgrade, I finally got onto the Real Internet, past the AOL community and started to understand the true power of the internet.

I went to my first couple of websites and fell in love with GamePro.com. It was around this time that I noticed that certain websites required another type of browser called Netscape (Grandfather of FireFox). So for the first couple of years there, you had to go back and forth with Netscape and Internet Explorer. Thatwas really annoying. I mean I was here, only 10 years old, craving new knowledge and discovering new stuff and I was being road-blocked by incompatibility.

I eventually started learning html to create my own website and started learning programming. That's when I learned about all the limitations that are imposed on a coder when having to create a website which works on two different browsers. Thatannoyed me even more. There were no standards then, even though Netscape dominated the Real Internet.

Fast forward a couple of years and Windows 98 was released. I remember running the Paint program one day and creating this cool drawing which I didn't save of course and then running into my First BLUE SCREEN OF Death. What The Hell is this? I had to restart my computer, and lost my drawing. That day, I lost all faith in computers and started playing video games for awhile.

A couple of years later XP was released and that got me hooked back into computers. I wasn't really loyal to Microsoft but hey I had Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and continuing up the step is the newest thing XP. By this time I had started learning C++ coding in school, and being self taught Visual Basics at home. I started creating programs that would communicate across the internet and ran into several problems compatibility problems.

By this time there was a standard in html, and I simply gave up on coding programs for a specific operating system, since there where so many still around. People still have 95, and 98, and XP. Then 2000ME and NT was released. So I gave up and took an interest in the internet which was becoming more and more stable.

Now if you notice, Microsoft started to represent itself to me as a company that started to expand into too many directions and lost focus. It represented disorganization and this started to annoy me. It already caused me to lose interest in application programming and made me switch to internet programming, wait for the day applications will be driven from the internet and get me to my programming roots. I mean, the internet was great, but coding C++ programming and learning machine language was more exciting than coding bold and italic. They took that away from me.

Now come full circle, finally off the Microsoft operating system, I realize that Microsoft is not the problem. When reading the article on how other developers are leaving in frustration, it's not Microsoft's fault. They represent the lack of disciple necessary to create a functioning system that all users can understand and control. Innovation is lost and mediocre performance is accepted. All major companies get to this point. IBM did, Microsoft is, and one day Google will.

When a company, or project loses touch and focuses on the core goal and started entering new fields, its core functionality suffers. When this happens, buggy applications, programs or even general dysfunction arises. This is what happened from Windows 3.1 to XP. It created more complex problems as it went along. It was simply coding onto old coding.

I remember when I first got onto Mac OS X (Feb 2007). It was my first time with the computer experience of Apple since 1992. I had been on Microsoft and spent some time on the Dark Side of Linux since. Anyways, I didn't know whether my docs would work, I was terrified.But by this time, I hated Microsoft and their 3rd rated products so much that I was willing to try anything.

I could now believe my experience. I mean when I opened a program, there was almost no loading time. I could open any file run any program and it worked. I could even open the new .docx files and was able to read them in TextEdit. I mean the thing just worked. I didn't know that there was an experience like this available.

Around this time Vista had been released, and flopped like I hoped it would. I feel sorry for those with the bad taste in their mouth. I remember when I bought my own MacBook Pro Laptop, I thouhtto myself, Free at Last. But I still felt sorry for everybody else without this experience.

To make a very long story short, when I come across a website that is old,outdated and is not compliant with standards, it makes me think of Microsoft. Even when I come across programs that are coded using old techniques, it gives me that sick feel. I get that cringe because that means somewhere in the world, someone is not going to be able to view that page or run that program. It reminds me of that 10 year old boy who lost his drawing and other countless programs created that could not run properly.

So I have pledged to myself to make sure that anyone experiencing any of my websites, programs or any project I'm involved with, would be able to experience it like it was supposed to be experienced. That's why I obsess over standards. That's why I spend an hour fixing a compatibility program on a web page which a regular web designer would not even think of and ignore. I want everyone to experience what it is to go to the internet and have something work. What was stolen from me by Microsoft was eventually given back to me through Apple.