Turtle Weighs In -
in the Fight for Web Standards

by Eileen Parzek
Turtle's Web Art & Design

(written in 1998 in support of the Web Standards Project)

I remember, like it was yesterday, the first day I saw the web. It was the Spring of 1995. I was a miserable state worker with a bevy of unrelated skills that had no place in the system, which made me very useful but not particularly employable. Our resident high-priest of computer stuff called me downstairs to see "something" and behold, I saw the web. It was in a browser we fondly remember (or not) as Mosaic. The background was gray. But there it was: Digital graphics. Hypertext. Information. My three loves, all in one place, cross platform, viewable by anyone in the world.

I lost my mind that day :)

I started creating web pages with that odd assortment of skills, and my life changed forever. Over the last three plus years, I've had my fingers in what must be close to 150 web projects, and I went from a woman who couldn't spell "entrepreneur" to a successful businesswoman with a thriving design business.

But the fact that the web is accessible to all, and has blasted ahead into the huge mass medium that it is, has always been linked in my mind to the fact that everyone could see the content I developed. At the same time, we've moved FAR beyond those gray browser days, to a time where there are wild innovations taking place, making our browsers capable of amazing things. IF you have the right browser to see it. And that is where the problem lies.

I'm all for innovation, and competition. But the fact that just about any new trick I learn to implement in my client's site is potentially going to shut out a significant portion of their audience, is unacceptable. So, as a result, Turtle's Web hasn't been doing DHTML, CSS, Javascript, blah blah blah. We won't, until 1) a client with a captive audience demands it, and waves large sums of money in our face to face the nightmares of creating it. Or 2) the browser companies start behaving themselves.

The beauty of the World Wide Web lies in the ability to make information available in a consistent manner to all people with access, globally, regardless of their method of access. The browser companies, in their quest for market share, seem to have forgotten that.

That is why Turtle's Web Art & Design supports the Web Standards Project. We WANT to do all the cool things that come rolling out of this industry. But until we can do that AND create content which is equally accessible by our client's entire audience, we feel forced to wait. Hope. And now, fight.

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