The latest WSA winner is none other than the sony.co.uk site, reviewed by industry respected standards designer : Andy Clarke.

Upon reading the review, my first thought was that Andy had accidentally added the entry to the WSA site whilst trying to add it to his stuff site – the ‘review’ has a very ‘blog-discussion’ feel, rather than a review for a site. [Actually, my first thought was: "Bollocks! My site has been knocked off the front page of the WSA site. Bye-Bye quality traffic. Sigh." – Heh!]

I would also question it’s worthiness ( < word?) of the award considering it's 'crazy' CSS and markup. Plus : baby blue and pink??? Is this an appropriate colour use for the UK home of Sony??? - I would question that decision.

This is by the by, because …

Upon reading the entry, it is actually an interesting and worthy addition. The WSA site is probably the best ‘arena’ to ‘dangle a carrot’ in front of the Sony people. Andy’s questions are ones we would all like to hear the answers to. It would be very, very useful to hear Sony’s whole reasoning and approach to, well, the web in general really.

I was going to post a comment on the site giving my own thoughts on Andy’s questions, but then I thought: ‘I don’t work for Sony. How do I know?’. So I’ve pasted most of my intended post below, and will wait with intrigue for Sony’s reply / replies on the WSA site …

You can view the ‘Sony UK Web Standards Awards’ entry [here].

What I was going to say an’ that:

I would say that the decision was made to reduce overheads. Here’s my thinking …

The latest web development methods are simply the best methods for any site that requires constant updating – both in terms of content and visual presentation.

Sony is a scale of company that needs to change the look and presentation of the .co.uk site more rapidly than other companies with other sites – to push certain new products, or adjust to new cultural / target market requirements and trends.

With CSS, they can do this quickly and cost effectively, whilst maintaining a solid constant presence.

There is no doubt that Sony will continue to produce ‘Flash’ non-standards compliant sub-sites (to push certain products etc.), which would suggest that they are not motivated by the need to be "accessible" (in inverted commas, if you get my drift). These sites serve their ‘multimedia-wow-factor’ purpose and then are taken down – but the sony.co.uk site needs to be a more of a ‘rock’ in terms of its existence – more constant.

Plus big companies need to show that they are aware of ‘accessibilty issues’ – so they could well be just ‘ticking a box’, so to speak(?)

As for the CSS file: If you view it using the ‘Edit CSS’ drop-down on the FF webdev toolbar, and then scroll really fast down, it looks exactly like the opening credits to the matrix (especially if you alter the colour balance on your monitor to green – which I’ve not done by the way). It’s not a CSS file at all. Its an actual blueprint for life itself. This is Sony after-all.