Jeffrey Zeldman reports on standards. Particularly RDF
. He believes standard should:
1. Solve practical problems. (A standard whose primary purpose is to prove a theory will be of little real use to designers and developers.)
2. Be easy to understand. (Steep learning curves are okay for applications like Director and Photoshop. But if a web technology is so complex that even experts aren’t sure they understand it, it’s unlikely to be widely adopted or correctly used. If it’s vague as well as complex, the door is opened to incompatible implementations—1997 all over again.)
3. Be capable of practical implementation. (Don’t expect anyone to take a new technology on faith. Be sure it works before asking companies to base their businesses on it.)
4. Lend itself to widespread adoption. (A standard that isn’t widely adopted is merely a thesis.)
It makes solid sense.
Tagged As Big Ideas
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Posted at 12:00 PM