Closed And Open Web Are Really Different

The closed sites, like intranets and extranets, are usually not much talked about when we talk about the Web. I recently met a bunch of them and realized that they did not care about the Web standards much. And I cannot blame them completely for it.

Intranets or closed sites are treated more like desktop applications. The application can dictate its requirements on its users and not care about rest of the Web. The owners of these sites are in a position to:

• enforce the environment on the user - browser, platforms, plugins, fonts, versions
• this also includes asking the user to install whatever is required to get ready to start using the application
• impose restrictions about who can use it and who cannot
• ignore a minority who demands compatibility with other tools
• give lesser importance to scaling, as the number of users can be controlled
• ignore rest of the Web, as the content is anyway not open to all. At times this leads ignorance for best practices of design for SEO and accessibility.
• lose track of Web standards

On the good side, these closed sites make you think about a lot of things before you start the work. Things like roles and permissions get worked out a lot earlier.

I am not sure if this is bad for the closed site or for its owner. But in a lot of ways, this development is closer to desktop development. Unfortunately, this makes the transition to developing public web sites more difficult. In fact I think it is the same as that for the desktop developer.

The interesting thing is that we can use the same tools for creating both, the closed and open sites. However, only the tool expertise, without understanding the differences, does not work. It is extremely important that the developers, and the companies that hire them, understand that the constraints can make a world of difference.