Web standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods. An Internet standard is a specification for an innovative internetworking technology or methodology, which the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) ratified as an open standard after the innovation underwent peer review. ... Specification may refer to several different concepts: Specification (standards) refers to specific standards Specificatio - a legal concept Specification (regression) refers to the practice of translating theory into a regression model Category: ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. ... The term best practice generally refers to the best possible way of doing something; it is used in the fields of business management, software engineering, and medicine. ... A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. ... Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media delivery via Internet in the form of Markup language suitable for interpretation by Web browser and display as Graphical user interface (GUI). ...

Many interdependent standards and specifications, some of which govern aspects of the Internet, not just the World Wide Web, directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and web services. While any of these may be called “web standards,” advocates within the web standards movement tend to focus on the higher-level standards that most directly affect the accessibility and usability of web sites. Web standards, in the broader sense, consist of the following: The W3C defines a Web service (many sources also capitalize the second word, as in Web Services) as a software system designed to support interoperable Machine to Machine interaction over a network. ... It has been suggested that Easy Access be merged into this article or section. ... Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. ...

• Recommendations published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• Internet standard (STD) documents published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
• Request for Comments (RFC) documents published by the Internet Engineering Task Force
• Standards published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
• Standards published by Ecma International (formerly ECMA)
• The Unicode Standard and various Unicode Technical Reports (UTRs) published by the Unicode Consortium
• Name and number registries maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)

It has been suggested that W3C Markup Validation Service be merged into this article or section. ... An Internet standard is a specification for an innovative internetworking technology or methodology, which the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) ratified as an open standard after the innovation underwent peer review. ... The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standard bodies; and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. ... In internetworking and computer network engineering, Request for Comments (RFC) documents are a series of memoranda encompassing new research, innovations, and methodologies applicable to Internet technologies. ... “ISO” redirects here. ... Ecma International is an international, private (membership-based) standards organization for information and communication systems. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, DNS root zone management, and other Internet protocol assignments. ...

Common usage

Usually, when a Web site or Web page is described as complying with Web standards, it means the site or page has HTML that is semantic and valid or nearly valid, along with valid or nearly valid CSS. HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ...

Also, when Web standards are discussed, the following publications are typically seen as foundational:

• Recommendations for markup languages, such as HTML, XHTML, SVG, and XForms, from W3C.
• Recommendations for stylesheets, especially CSS, from W3C.
• Standards for ECMAScript, a.k.a. JavaScript, from Ecma International.
• Recommendations for the Document Object Model, from W3C.

A W3C Recommendation is a specification or set of guidelines that, after extensive consensus-building, has received the endorsement of W3C Members and the Director. A specialized markup language using SGML is used to write the electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary. ... HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ... The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax. ... SVG is also the IATA code for Stavanger Airport, Sola in Norway. ... XForms is two things: 1. ... CSS Zen garden with the Paravion style sheet CSS Zen garden with the Uncultivated style sheet Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a computer language used to describe the presentation of a structured document written in HTML, XHTML or XML. The CSS specification is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium... “CSS” redirects here. ... ECMAScript is a scripting programming language, standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification. ... It has been suggested that Client-side JavaScript be merged into this article or section. ... // Hierarchy of Objects in the DOM - Document Object Model The Document Object Model (DOM) is a platform- and language-independent standard object model for representing HTML or XML and related formats. ...

An IETF Internet Standard is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet community.

A specification that reaches the status of Standard is assigned a number in the IETF STD series while retaining its original IETF RFC number.

See also

• Microformats
• Web Standards Project

Microformats are mark-up that allow expression of semantics in an HTML (or XHTML) web page. ... The Web Standards Project is a group of professional web designers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the standards promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). ...

External links

• W3C homepage
• The Internet Engineering Task Force
• The Web Standards Project
• The Web Standards Group