It has occured to me as I peruse the internet that the idea of usasbiliy and standards is not really catching on the way it should. Take splash pages for instance. Kevin is not a fan of them, and his prejudice is rubbing off on me. "Oh, click here to enter the site, sorry I thought I was already at your site. My mistake."

Then there is the crutch of imagery and wysiwig editors that leave proprietary crap in your mark up, bloating the code and extending download times. Imagery is a hold out of the old net, where eye candy and novelty ruled. I thought we had emerged from the death of the dot coms, a stronger, more mature web. I was apparently wrong.

Still too many of our "best" sites are .gif heavy mostrosities. i.e. k10k.org, Ultrashock and a thousand others. Now I am not saying that these sites are not executed well, or lack in snazzy, slick designs. I just wish they would leverage the power of XHTML, and CSS more. The only way that any change on the web will be realized is if we as a design community step to the front of the battle and design sites that break non standards compliant browsers, forcing end users, and yes developers to take W3C recommendations more seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the ideas of backwards compatibility, and all that nonesense. I understand where Tim, and Kevin Basil are arguing from. But how can change and acceptance come when we as designers coddle the average web surfer. There comes a point when enough is enough. Only through difficulty can change ever truly be realized. Only through poking and prodding can we raise the standard of design on the web to where it should be.

Think of it, a web where usability, accesability, standards and design flow together, effortlessly creating content, form and function. Can you see it?

I can. It looks absolutley wondrous.