Opera has recently released its Web Standards Curriculum. With support already from the Yahoo! Developer Network, the Web Standards Project, and many universities, the current curriculum offers 23 articles with 30 more promised by September. There are articles that cover the topics of standards introduction, design concepts, and HTML. The 30 articles yet to be released are likely to cover topics like CSS and JavaScript.

The release of this curriculum is important to many groups of people, webmasters being one group. As webmasters, we know that standards are very important. The more standards we can and do adhere to, the better chance our website has of being displayed correctly within the many different browsers available. Even if you adhere to the standards, there will always be problems and issues that arise, but following the standards is still important. As Opera explains:

The beauty of the Web is that it creates a uniform, international development platform. Using Web Standards means your sites will be quicker to code and maintain, more compact, and accessible to web users regardless of their browsing platform and (dis)ability. (Opera)

The Web Standards Curriculum is part of Opera Education. Ultimately these education programs are meant to spread the usage of their browser; I believe they have chosen a great way to do it. Not only are the spreading the word about the browser, but they are helping the community as well. As the Opera browser usage increases, so will knowledge and understanding of web technologies and standards. I was very pleased to read about the release of the Web Standards Curriculum; I hope that there will be more to come.

I have been designing and programming on the web for 10 years and still have so much more to learn. I hope to use what I have learned from my MBA to mix business with web technologies in future endeavors.