Is your web site obsolete?

Business and Economic Review, Apr-Jun 2003 by Lewis, Paul H

Why the programming code you probably used for your Web site is fast becoming passe, and what you can do about it.

Big technological changes are coming to the World Wide Web that will have direct and significant impacts on your organization's Web site.

One of the most important changes is that the Web is moving toward widespread adoption of a standard for data description and exchange known as Extensible Markup Language (XML). Experts describe it as a "super" mark-up language that will have as large an impact on the Web's future as hypertext mark-up language (HTML) had on its early development.

Moving Beyond HTML

For those who have never dabbled with creating content for a Web site, HTML is the programming code underlying every Web page. Unlike most true computer programming languages, HTML is relatively simple to learn. Millions of people, in fact, have embraced it to build the billions of pages of content that make up the Web as we know it today.

HTML, however, has a number of technical limitations. For example, while it is very well suited for displaying pages of text and graphics using Web browser software on a computer monitor, it is not well suited for presenting and navigating your Web site's content on other devices such as cellphones, handheld PDAs (personal digital assistants), text-to-- voice converters for visually impaired users, and other tools yet to be developed that people will use to access the Web in the future.

HTML was designed to have a limited set of controls for displaying information so that it would be simple to learn and use. XML, on the other hand, was developed to provide an unlimited capacity for structuring, describing, and sharing computer data regardless of the platform or device.

XML will not be limited to the Web. It will be built into all types of software to simplify and streamline datasharing between word processor, spreadsheet, database, and other applications. XML is expected to be the most commonly used method for exchanging data between businessto-business (B2B) Web sites.1

XML and HTML are just two of the numerous technical standards governing the Web's growth developed by an organization known as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C was founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist credited with inventing the Web. Today the W3C is still headed by Berners-Lee and consists of more than 400 academic, corporate, governmental, and nonprofit member institutions from around the world.

The W3C's mission is to promote the inter-operability of numerous computer, telecommunications, and multimedia technologies in use on the Web.

Other goals include developing open, nonproprietary standards that ensure universal access to the Web and developing a software environment that permits each user to make the best use of resources on the Web.2

Joined at the Hip

On Jan. 26, 2000, the W3C essentially merged parts of the XML and HTML specifications by issuing a new technical standard named XHTML to serve as the transitional mark-up language between HTML and XML. XHTML combines the simplicity of HTML with the power of XML. Anyone who has devoted time and effort to learning HTML will feel quite comfortable with XHTML, as it is similar in most respects to its predecessor. This, of course, is both great news and not-so-great news for any individual or organization that already has a Web site.

Those who adopt the W3C's XHTML standard and use it to begin building pages and Web sites can do so easily, confident that their home on the Web can be fully accessed by the entire range of Web-enabled devices that we'll be using in the future. Those who don't adopt the new standard and continue to use HTML, however, will notice over time that they are steadily losing more and more potential visitors and customers.

There is, of course, another big problem for those who already have Web sites that were built using HTML. These people and organizations, if they want the benefits offered by XHTML, will have to decide whether to systematically convert all or a portion of their old Web pages from HTML to XHTML, or start over and build from scratch all new Web sites with standards-compliant content. Ouch!

A Little Help

For those who want to make the switch to XHTML, there are some tools available to assist with the transition. It's interesting to note that as of this writing, one of the most popular software programs for developing Web sites (i.e., Microsoft's FrontPage) does not conform to the XHTML standard and thus does not produce standards-compliant Web pages by default. Other popular programs (Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Adobe's GoLive) have recently been retooled to produce XHTML-- compliant Web pages. Users of earlier versions of these products will need to purchase upgrades.

Some lesser-known, free XHTML-- compliant Web page creation software programs are available for downloading from the Web. One powerful, free utility program, named HTML Tidy, can convert numerous old HTML files to the newer XHTML format automatically in a batch, thus saving enormous time in reworking individual Web pages one by one. The W3C also offers a validator service on its Web site that is extremely helpful when reworking HTML Web pages to conform to the XHTML standard.