Opera Software has released a free online Web Standards Curriculum aimed at encouraging students to create standards-based websites.

"This is a web standards course comprised of several articles, aimed at pretty much anyone who wants to learn web standards-based web design from scratch," said Chris Mills, developer relations manager at Opera.

"It is intended to take the reader from nothing more than a basic familiarity with browsing the web, to being competent with CSS and HTML and have basic knowledge of JavaScript and how it fits in to the puzzle."

The online curriculum currently includes 23 articles with a further 30 to come.

Mills claimed that he had heard of students being marked down for using web standards in coursework because marking schemes were outdated.

"I have also heard tales of employers despairing because when they interview university graduates for web-related positions, they find out that the graduates really do not have a clue about real-world web development," he said.

Opera explained that its browser is standards-based, unlike Internet Explorer, and can therefore accurately render standards-based web pages.

The announcement comes hard on the heels of a research study which revealed that users of the rival Firefox are more likely to have fully patched browsers and thus be safer online.

The 18-month study was conducted by researchers at the Swiss Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, along with IBM and Google.

The survey showed that just over 83 per cent of Firefox users, 65.3 per cent of Safari users, 56.1 per cent of Opera users and 47.6 per cent of Internet Explorer users had fully patched browsers.