The Internet is so vast and encompasses not only a huge amount of technologies, languages and systems but also people with different abilities. There are so many differences that it is important that the businesses who distribute technology over the Internet adhere to a set of standards ensuring compatibility.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Founded in 1994 by the inventor of the Internet Sir Tim Berners Lee the W3C is the Internet standards body. Before the W3C was founded there was contention between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator as they offered incompatible versions of HTML because they added proprietary features. Due to this there was inconsistency between many web pages so the consortium was set up to ensure all web browsers implemented a set of universally acceptable standards.

Making Sense Of It All

The reason the standards were set up was to stop the large corporations developing the internet to suit their own interests and in many sense it has achieved this aim. However it costs a large amount of money to be a member of the W3C and because it is not strongly tied to academic institutions it critics have argued that it is skewed towards favouring larger companies.

Our opinion is that Sir Tim is a smart and pretty decent guy so with him in charge we generally agree, however there are quite a few technologies that are widespread such as video content that break these standards. So although it is important to adhere to the rules it is equally as important to know when to break them.

Make Webfangled Your Standard

We know a great deal about many different aspects of the internet, if you need a website get in contact with us to see what we can do for you.