Let’s be honest: few of us spend much time on the W3C website excitedly pouring over the latest guidelines and specifications. The documents and the design itself are probably best described as functional rather than attractive.
However, last month the W3C launched a new beta version of their website that incorporates a fresher, clearer, more modern design. The redesign aims to:
- make it easier to locate the information you require
- create a consistent page navigation
- follow the conventions used by other websites
- make previously hidden content easier to find
- provide aggregated community information
- improve rendering on mobile devices (train journeys will never be boring again!)
- ensure pages meet WCAG 2.0 guidelines
- improve maintenance, and
- adopt technologies such as RSS.
It’s best not to expect whizzy graphics and animated widgets, but the new design is certainly an improvement on their increasingly dated website.
Do you like it? Will it persuade you to eagerly visit the site every day? Do you hate it? Does the blue and grey design make you ill? The W3C is looking for feedback from the web development community regarding the design, usability and any other aspect of the website.
Links:
- beta.w3.org
- About the W3C site redesign
- Example specification: XHTML Basic 1.1
- Example specification: WCAG Guidelines 2.0
- How to help and send feedback
We welcome your comments here too.
Craig BucklerCraig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's created enterprise specifications, websites and online applications for companies and organisations including the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Microsoft, and more. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler.
