Standardization can be considered cornerstone of the modern era. Manufacturers standardize the process of assembling vehicles, and businesses standardize the way they exchange data. Standardization allows for efficient assembly lines to operate within high volume factories. The construction industry is relaying on standardization to build homes quickly.
Actually, the Internet would never work without the standardization of protocols like the TCP and IP. Furthermore, the W3C spearheads the Web Standards effort with the HTML, XHTML and CSS specification to make the user experience standardized across the multitude of Web browsers... which in turn (you guessed it) are getting standardized.
So, what about the development of Websites? How is the concept of building a Website different from the concept of building a house or assembling a car?
We believe that all good Websites have certain features in common and these features can be nicely standardized. The page layout for majority of sites can be nicely broken down into the following blocks:
- Header
- Main Navigation
- Sub Navigation
- Breadcrumbs (raise your hand if you don't know what this means...)
- Side content area (or Sidebar)
- Title
- Content area
- Footer
You can build just about any page using these standardized components. You can make them look anyway you want, position them in different places on the page but you will most likely use them.
Anyhow, this is just a small example of what standardization of Website development (and actually the Website development process) can bring. I will perpetually post additional examples and more "rationale" for standardization in this industry.
One of the things we are trying to accomplish with WebAssemblyLine™ is the actual standardization of Website development that will allow for unprecedented cooperation within development teams (and even among multiple development teams), freelancers, marketing and advertising companies (which now hurt because they generally do not have the right skills and experience to develop good, extensible, and affordable Websites). Furthermore, WAL™ will help to streamline tremendously the actual process of conceptualizing, designing and building of Websites. Then it will allow to extend and add new sections, dynamic features and even E-commerce seamlessly to the already existing site.
Sounds too good to be true? Stay tuned... or go ahead and sign up to be notified when we are ready to show you more.
4 comments so far
03 May 2006, Lukasz said:
Websites as a unit are already standardized, since they’re all (mostly) built out of the same kind of components: pages, where each page contains the items you listed above. What’s not standardized is the way you build the website, i.e. how you arrive at the final product. Currently every web developer has his own little assembly line, whereas WAL is introducing a generic assembly line, that can be adopted by multiple website “manufacturers”.
WAL has the potential to stop us from asking questions like “how do I go about building this Website?” and start saying “this is how I should build this Website”.
03 May 2006, Oto said:
Lukasz, good point! Although you have to admit that large amount of Websites are actually built with pages missing some essential elements (like for example the breadcrumbs).
I am trying to make a point that although many developers may know that tere are some specific parts of a page, the process will not be standardized until there is a system that helps you organize the page around standardized page elements.
24 Jul 2006, Helen said:
In real world standards are prescribed by powered authorities and certifications bodies. IT sphere lacks something like that.
22 Aug 2006, Sam said:
I can’t believe you just said ‘IT sphere’, I wonder if anybody has told the blogosphere about this?
Sorry, the comments are closed at this time.