Emily Chang – Designer

We’ve been advocating web standards for some time now, but for those of you first hearing about the benefits of building and designing sites around web standards, the W3C has a great introduction to understanding the concepts and the relationships between web standards, accessibility, and CSS in its article, “How to achieve Web standards and quality on your Web site.”

Consolidated links to websites, essays, resources, and tools related to web standards:

World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.

The Web Standards Project
Devoted to adhering to W3C standards in Web page design.

Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
“Designing With Web Standards is for every web professional who wants to reach more users on more browsers, platforms, and devices – including wireless and hand-held devices – with less work, less maintenance, and at lower cost. It’s for designers, developers, site owners and managers who seek to end the costly spiral of obsolescence, where each new browser or Internet device means a whole new coding cycle and another line item on the budget. Few organizations today can afford the merry-go-round of coding and re-coding that has characterized web development until now.”

The Business Value of Web Standards by Jeff Veen

Web Standards Awards
The Web Standards Awards aims to promote web site design using W3C standards by seeking out and highlighting the finest standards-compliant sites on the Internet.

A web standards checklist by Max Design Australia

Developing With Web Standards by Roger Johansson

Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cederholm
“I wrote a book. It’s filled with standards-compliant solutions intended to give web designers and developers ammunition — to make the best choices with markup and style.”

Using Headings
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-logical-headings

Search Engine Friendly URLs
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/search-engine-friendly-urls
“Most search engines (with a few exceptions – namely Google) will not index any pages that have a question mark or other character (like an ampersand or equals sign) in the URL… what good is a site if no one can find it?”

Tools

Code Validator
http://validator.w3.org/

CSS Validator
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/g/

Text-based Browser Simulator
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview/

Broken Link Checker
http://validator.w3.org/checklink/

As an online designer, I’m always looking offline for inspiration and ideas.  (Once you’ve been a sculptor, you can never truly escape the physical world.) Part of the beauty of city life is the constant stream of emotional and environmental influence – every city block a testament to the power of design’s influence over our daily lives.  In my quest to seek out design that is both functional and beautiful, I often look to industrial and product design, as well as interior design and architecture.  You might enjoy these two sites if you’re looking to tap into the spirit of modern, contemporary design in the physical world.

Design Addict has always been one of my favorite sites for its wealth of information about the latest in industrial design, furniture, and design objects.  Search the database of over 540 designers at DesignAddict Designer Index.

MoCo Loco is “a web magazine featuring modern contemporary design news and views” (and one of those sites that I kicked myself for not doing it first).  Great coverage of modern design news as well as a network of cities including Amsterdam, Montreal, Tokyo, and our own San Francisco.

Cop pulling over a car eleven stories down.