Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Current Web Standards

Okay, so standards are great, but what standards are we talking about? This section looks at the current standards for the structural, presentational, and behavioral aspects of web design.

Web design and development is commonly discussed in terms of “layers” (and sometimes, even as a “layer cake,” which is more enticing), borrowing a layer model from one commonly used for describing network protocols. The marked up document forms the structural layer, which is the foundation on which other layers may be applied. Next comes the presentation layer, specified with Cascading Style Sheets, that provides instructions on how the document should look on the screen, sound when it is read aloud, or be formatted when it is printed. On top of these layers, there may also be a behavioral layer , the scripting and programming that adds interactivity and dynamic effects to a site. This edition of Web Design in a Nutshell is organized according to this new mental model of web design.

The following is a summary of web technology Recommendations (what the W3C calls its final published standards) as of this writing. You can check in with further developments of these technologies at the W3C site (http://www.w3.org).