The W3C Standards “define an Open Web Platform” that enables developers to create international, interactive experiences that are powered by vast data stores and are available on any device. The standards ensure technical and editorial quality thereby making modern web development more clean and manageable. During the browser wars, competing browser companies made web development a burden. Due to the lack of web standards, a developer would have to “know 5 different ways of writing JavaScript” or build “two different but effectively duplicate sites for the two main browsers, and other times just choosing to support only one browser, and blocking others from using their sites”. The issues caused by the browser wars were redundant, so web professionals set about writing and administering a set of web standards. The web standards have made modern web development less redundant and more innovative.
Imagine how difficult and disorganized web development would be today if these standards did not exist, especially considering the multitudes of electronic devices available to the public. As laptops and mobile devices have become popular, the web has become more integrated into people’s lives, which significantly changes the way people use and access the web. The standardization of the protocols and technologies used to build the web made it possible to make web content available to as wide a population of the world as possible, including people with disabilities.
Cited information retrieved from http://www.w3.org/standards/ and
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/2-the-history-of-the-internet-and-the-w/
Holly Warg 