What is Standards Compliant Code?

In the early days of the World Wide Web the rules for coding a web page were fairly foot-loose and fancy-free. Different browsers supported different standards (and features) and HTML coders were able to produce decent looking web pages using some pretty sloppy code - because each browser needed to be very forgiving in order to accomodate this wide variety of features.

The use of the term 'sloppy code' may seem a little altruistic and 'techie' to most website users but the effects of said code could, and did, lead to some very strange on-line experiences for people using different browsers. For example, Internet Explorer has often been more accommodating of badly coded web pages than some of its less well-known but still widely used competitors such as Firefox, Opera and Safari. This traditionally meant that a page might look pretty reasonable (even superb) in IE but dreadful in each of the other browsers (which now account for over 25% of the market so you can see the problem).

There'll always be some differences between how the various browsers display a web page but one way of reducing these differences is for web developers to code their web pages using a consistent coding format that is understood by all the major browsers in generally the same way.

These days, this 'standards compliant approach' involves using markup languages such as XHTML, which require stringent adherence to an agreed coding format that helps to explain both its syntax (how the code is laid out) and its semantics (what it actually means). It also means that styling languages such as CSS have a strict format too, reducing the discrepancies in layout and styling that non-compliant code can encourage between the various browsers.