What are these?

Good question. If you see these on a page, it means it passes the W3C validation tests for complying with web and/or CSS standards.

This is a good thing because it means that this page is usable in any modern browser, has no flakey code and shouldn't break at any point in the future.

And I suppose it means I actually know what I'm doing.

The downside is their logos are pretty crappy, so I'm not going to put them on every page.

This site also passes Section 508 testing (which is the US standard for acessibility. As far as I know the UK has no current equivalent test).

No badge for that one though.

Designing To Web Standards

Web Standards. What the hell does that mean? Well, the best definition I've seen is simply this: 'a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.'

To which I'd only add it should look great as well.

Accessibility issues, Web Standards and CSS layout are all inter-linked. The theory and technology might not interest you, but the benefits are very real.

The future is here.

Originally, the web was only ever intended for text, text and more text. Worthy, but dull. To make it sexier, developers devised various hacks and patches (think chewing gum, string and gaffer tape) to enable images, animation, etc.

Tables, which were only ever devised to display, uh, tabular data, such as price lists for instance, were hi-jacked to do all kinds of other stuff. Including laying out the structure of the whole page. Some people (not guilty) even jammed 'invisible' files into layouts to make things fit - the dreaded 'spacer.gif.' (Pass me that hammer, this screw doesn't fit...).

So much of this was implemented in a piecemeal or half-baked manner, everything became a bit messy. Things which worked in say, Netscape didn't work in Internet Explorer or vice versa. Different browsers even measure things differently. On the web, 2+2 is not always 4.

Consider how much more sophisticated the web is now compared to ten, or even five years ago. Hardly surprising the old methods are creaking a bit.

So in an ideal world, now that we know what we're doing (ahem...) we'd wipe the web and start again with a better approach.

Obviously that isn't going to happen.

But there is now a set of web standards, suggested by the W3C (basically the people who invented the web and some of their chums) which is the next best thing. Since there seems no good reason not to do this, and it's finally possible to create standards compliant pages which include Flash, Flying Solo sites will normally be of this type.

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Site complies with W3C guidelines + Section 508/WAI 1.0 Level A accessibility standards.