How to Uncover Pseudo-Standardistas
Post from November 20, 2008 (❠June 10, 2021), filed under Web Development (feed).
This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.
Thereâs a growing and annoying group of developers that donât help our attempts for more accessible, faster, more maintainable, and best practice web development: pseudo-standardistas. There are several ways to expose pseudos (apart from the hints Henri shared), the easiest being:
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Pseudo-standardistas claim to be member of standard bodies and organizations like e.g. W3C. However, a non-paper member participating in W3C work will usually have at least one results page of entries when searching for him or her, so try e.g. searching at Google for contributions on W3C mailing lists. (Searching does of course work for verifying contributions to other organizations, too.)
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Pseudo-standardistas like to point out how great valid HTML is (it is, however validationâs not everything). Try validating their site to see if they act accordingly (but be aware of HTML 5â
<!DOCTYPE html>
âwhich is not recognized by the WDG and a few other validators). -
Pseudo-standardistas make maintenance mistakes like working with presentational ID and class names, and using (maybe even recommending) Conditional Comments or multiple style sheet references in the markup. This is a tough call (not everyone will appreciate this) and surely an advanced requirement (many peers donât find it problematic to link to several style sheets out of their pagesâ markup), but still a âred flagâ when it comes to maintainability.
There are more telltales of pseudo-advocates of modern web development (I feel reminded of âvalid this or thatâ badges), but at least in German-speaking countries thereâs an awkward tendency to rest on laurels not deserved yet. I donât mind decisive self-promotion and marketing (heck, itâs Europeâs small answer to Barack Obama writing this post), but we need to ask ourselves if thatâs in the best interest of our industry.
About Me

Iâm Jens, and Iâm an engineering lead and author. Iâve worked as a technical lead for Google, Iâm close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for OâReilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.
If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message. Thank you!
Comments (Closed)
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On November 20, 2008, 21:44 CET, Duluoz said:
Have you ever heard the term armchair quarterback? These are typically individuals who might have, or not, played some high school football, who think they can do better than the quarterbacks they watch on TV in their recliners. Perhaps there is such a thing as armchair standardistas?
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On November 24, 2008, 12:55 CET, Jens Oliver Meiert said:
David, no, unfortunately not! I like âarmchair standardistaâ! đ
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On November 27, 2008, 15:03 CET, Christophe Strobbe said:
Regarding point 1: (a) the mailing lists of some working groups are not public; (b) some other contributions have no public visibility, e.g. filling in questionnaires through the W3Câs WBS; (c) when searching mail archives, check that those mails donât just say âregretsâ (in response to the announcement of a conference call): some people seem to send more âregretsâ mails than anything else but donât want to give up working group âparticipationâ because it looks nice on their CVs (and book announcements).
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