World Wide Web Standards

 

What is W3C?

 

W3C Stands for the World Wide Web Consortium. W3C is an international consortium where Member organisations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C's mission is:

"To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for main_content the Web."

 

How W3C Started

 

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). W3C was created in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee and others to build consensus around Web technologies.

 

Why do we need Web Standards?

 

The purpose of the web standards is to make the web accessible to all users regardless of differences in culture, education, ability, resources, and physical limitations. In order to achieve this, it has devised standards and guidelines to help web designers. The standards are usually referred to as W3C recommendations. You can view the W3C Recommendations at

 

 

In order to maintain and monitor the standards W3C developed a validation tool at http://validator.w3.org/ so that web developers can check whether their website code meets the required standards. When a website has successfully passed validation, it will display validation icons similar to those displayed below: