October 30, 2003

A View from the Trenches

D. Keith Robertson has posted the first in a series of lessons learned from his recent re-design of the Seattle Children's Hospital website. This first post focuses on why they used web standards:

Since it went live a few weeks ago we’ve already began to reap the benefits of Web standard development, specifically XHTML 1.0 and CSS, down at the hospital. I’ve also had quite a few questions about some of the things we did, where we are seeing benefits and how it was all done.

Update: The second installment, on Usability, is now up:

If you are involved in designing, developing, writing for or managing Web sites or applications you owe it to yourself to get involved in some kind of usability process. It’s a real eye opening experience. No matter how much you feel you’ve mastered you craft, or how much you know you “get” the Web, watching a few real people use your sites will teach you loads and could really open your eyes to some things you’d never before noticed.

Very true.