Toss standards out the window?

Q: When does building websites with standards just become too much?…

A: When the ‘quitters’ have learning curves.

…But isn’t this the case with everything new that you have to learn? I’m sure tackling the browser quirks alone can be one gigantic stopper and self-esteem crusher especially when time is money.

So do we just give up on building sites using standards/css, even though it will be the standard in (x amount) years to come? Are we quitters?

Working for a design firm, I personally have a very busy schedule and not much allowed time to be learning. This must be done outside of work. Which is fine with me, because I enjoy it and am excited to be apart of the beginning of standards based design. (Well, not the beginning, but to everyone else out there that will never read this, it’s practically BEFORE the beginning. HA)

But for others, who live and breathe table based design and development, outside learning isn’t usually an option, especially when particular designers have families, other obligations, and are frankly just too stuborn. (not to generalize, but we all know this type) I can see how someone wouldn’t want to change/better themselves if they aren’t forced to by their employer or someone else, especially when standards based designing ISN’T the standard. Therefore seems foriegn anyway.

I still don’t agree with this way of thinking at all, but I guess I can understand. But if you are a designer, and haven’t heard about css and standards, and haven’t even tried to work through them and learn, then you have no business calling yourself a designer. That basically makes you seem as if you live under a log (your old!).

(In my personal experience) Many programmers/developers are in similar place as vertran designers when it comes to seeing DIVs all over the screen. They are basically lost at sea in a stuborn, ricket, old boat.

How will we ever overcome the gobs and gobs of nasty code produced by table based websites (and all the other pitfalls that caused from tables), if we don’t embrace new things and stop thinking, money money money! ‘Build it in tables, it will be much faster.’ Which inturn saves tons of money.

This is only true in the present. Building sites with standards would earn company ‘x’ more money in the end especially when it saves time on changes and digging through insane amounts of code. Saves time on development/coding. Accessible sites are also a great selling point. The list goes on and on.

I sadly don’t have an answer for any of this, but I will keep admiring the useage of CSS and continue to build my sites with it. That is the least I can do.

What this comes down to is something my mother used to say all the time: “If your not going to do it right the first time, then don’t do it at all. You will just have to spend double the amount of time when you have to go back and fix what you’ve already done.”

Good words of wisdom. Thanks mom.

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