14 Chapter 1 Designing for the World Wide Web There are two kinds of standards: de facto standards, which are introduced by commercial companies or research organizations and eventually become accepted by the community ­ PDF (Portable Document Format) is an example; and standards established by international committees of experts and interested parties. In web design that means the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) founded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994 and based jointly at MIT and other locations around the world. The W3C doesn't actually invent the standards ­ the technical specifications for various developments come from many different sources and the W3C has the role of endorsing the best of them. Recommendations are discussed and after The World Wide Web is a wonderful opportunity for the graphic designer, but it does have some curious challenges. For a start, until recently you did not have a great deal of control over how your designs and layouts would be seen. It is only possible to specify fonts that the user already has installed on their computer, and you can be reasonably certain only that they will have a subset of the most common fonts (see p90). You also have little control over what size they will be viewed at or the measure used. You have to accept that your design is going to appear differently on different browsers and on different machines (for an example of fluid design that works with these variables see Fig 1.3.) On the upside, some designers find these