Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Chris Kennon]

Hi,

Wasn't quite articulating this prior to your reply but the PHP  
includes and serving the correct doctype, with PHP are true boons to  
smaller sites  attempting  "semanticity."




On Aug 15, 2005, at 10:25 PM, Rei Paki wrote:


Paul

Separating core content from other structural content was  
constantly bugging me until I started to use PHP includes. This  
works particularly well for smaller sites.


The great thing about this method is the ability to place all  
elements (such as navigation, headers, footers, etc) in separate  
files away from the individual page's unique content. At the time  
the page is requested from the server, the elements are combined  
and draw the page style from the CSS file you specify.


This way, you get the benefit of easy updates (as you only change  
one file), as well as the separation of design (CSS) and  
'structural content' from the page's unique content. Unfortunately  
for the most part we're stuck with the limitations of HTML until  
the most popular browser starts being a bit more accommodating.


Apologies for the previous reply.

Rei Paki


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RE: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Patrick Lauke]

> Rick Faaberg

> > The beauty of this is that you can include xslt libraries to pretty
> > much rewrite the most horrid html to clean standards based xhtml.
> > 
> > The additional bonus of this is that you can rearrange the semantic
> > layout of the html at will using nothing more than xslt.
> 
> Before I unsub because you all are way over my head, how do 
> you know this?
> Do you just pull it out of your *ss?

Psst...that's part of my everyday methodology. Don't tell anyone, ok?

> 
> I guess I just don't see where this type of info is readily 
> available and
> accessible without a lot of pain and reading 100s of websites.
> 
> Are there textbooks that cover this stuff? Or does W3C just 
> make it up and
> so there never could be a textbook?

I'm a bit puzzled, and I don't see what your problem is. XSLT can be used
to rewrite any type of XML into anything you want. It's a general purpose
way of generating whatever you want. With the right XSLT (and yes, there are
tons of books, articles, etc on this subject...just do a search for XSLT !?)
you can turn XHTML into RSS, HTML 4.01, Atom, plain text...anything at all.

Or am I missing something fundamental in your question? Are you complaining
that the W3C don't explain every single use you can put XSLT to?

Patrick
__
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
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Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Lea de Groot]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 02:33:31 -0700, Rick Faaberg wrote:
> Before I unsub because you all are way over my head, how do you know this?
> Do you just pull it out of your *ss?

Don't unsub - where else will you be exposed to so much stuff you 
hadn't even dreamed of?
:)

warmly,
Lea
-- 
Lea de Groot
Elysian Systems - http://elysiansystems.com/
Brisbane, Australia
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Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Adrian Lynch]

Rick Faaberg wrote:


Before I unsub because you all are way over my head, how do you know this?
Do you just pull it out of your *ss?
 


Sorry? Nice way to get an answer.

I know this because I have been doing this for the last 12 months -and 
so have many, many others.



I guess I just don't see where this type of info is readily available and
accessible without a lot of pain and reading 100s of websites.
 

The info is everywhere. w3c standards are a good start, but I found the 
dpawsons and zvon sites the most valuable.



Are there textbooks that cover this stuff? Or does W3C just make it up and
so there never could be a textbook?
 

There are many text books, do a google search for xslt and start 
reading. I'd happily point you to more resources, but well, I suspect 
you'd just ignore it.


-
Adrian Lynch
http://adrian.haymarket.com.au/ 


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Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Rick Faaberg]

> The beauty of this is that you can include xslt libraries to pretty
> much rewrite the most horrid html to clean standards based xhtml.
> 
> The additional bonus of this is that you can rearrange the semantic
> layout of the html at will using nothing more than xslt.

Before I unsub because you all are way over my head, how do you know this?
Do you just pull it out of your *ss?

I guess I just don't see where this type of info is readily available and
accessible without a lot of pain and reading 100s of websites.

Are there textbooks that cover this stuff? Or does W3C just make it up and
so there never could be a textbook?

Seems crazy

Rick Faaberg

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Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Adrian Lynch]

On 8/16/05, Patrick H. Lauke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Paul Bennett wrote:

> As soon as there is consistent browser support for client side xslt,
we'll be able to deliver pure xml to the client and have it apply style
and layout as the / browser chooses. True accessibility and universality.

The problem, though, would be that everybody will invent their own XML
based markup to suit their needs, which will make it impossible for
search engines to index properly


We currently use server-side transformation of xml to xhtml using
xslt, with the ability to provide different output by simply parsing
the xml through a different xslt.

The beauty of this is that you can include xslt libraries to pretty
much rewrite the most horrid html to clean standards based xhtml.

The additional bonus of this is that you can rearrange the semantic
layout of the html at will using nothing more than xslt.

I am also not convinced that rendering xml on the client side will be
an option for a while yet (not for general content anyway) as Patrick
noted. Since xhtml *IS* xml anyway, and the fact that it's trivial to
serve up an RSS/Atom feed, clients already have a lot of options for
rendering content (ie newsreaders, switching css, disabling css etc.).

As mentioned previously, DocBook seemed overkill for the content we
deal with, so like everyone else, we have pretty much rolled our own
xml abstraction layer.

I would be very interested in any info on standardised xml 'templates'
for content, as it would then allow development of an xml to standards
output which would be consistant between vendors.

-
Adrian Lynch
http://adrian.haymarket.com.au/


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RE: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Kara O'Halloran - Eduka]

As far as sitemap pages go I believe there is a (beta) standard that
Google set in place for the sitemap page that gives suggested tags to
use etc.

I'm not a technical person so forgive me if this holds no relevance!

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login 

Seems like a step in the right direction...

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick H. Lauke
Sent: Tuesday, 16 August 2005 3:18 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

Paul Bennett wrote:

> As soon as there is consistent browser support for client side xslt,
we'll be able to deliver pure xml to the client and have it apply style
and layout as the / browser chooses. True accessibility and
universality.

The problem, though, would be that everybody will invent their own XML
based markup to suit their needs, which will make it impossible for
search engines to index properly (they wouldn't even know what is a
link, a heading, etc) and assistive technology such as screen readers
would not be able to provide any sophisticated methods of navigation. 
Web developers will need to agree to a certain extent to a common
standard, otherwise we'll have a very fragmented set of "my very own
markup format" which would be indistinguishable from plain, unstructured
text to any programmatic tools (unless we have a method to unequivocally
specify the semantics of any of our own made up formats...something like
a DTD or Schema, but with added options to define what is a link,
heading, etc, and their relative importance and relationship with each
other).

Hmm...hope that made some kind of sense...it's too early in the morning
for this sort of heavy talk ;)

--
Patrick H. Lauke
__
re*dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-,
re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk |
www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com
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Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Patrick H. Lauke]

Paul Bennett wrote:

As soon as there is consistent browser support for client side xslt, 
we'll be able to deliver pure xml to the client and have it apply style 
and layout as the / browser chooses. True accessibility and universality.


The problem, though, would be that everybody will invent their own XML 
based markup to suit their needs, which will make it impossible for 
search engines to index properly (they wouldn't even know what is a 
link, a heading, etc) and assistive technology such as screen readers 
would not be able to provide any sophisticated methods of navigation. 
Web developers will need to agree to a certain extent to a common 
standard, otherwise we'll have a very fragmented set of "my very own 
markup format" which would be indistinguishable from plain, unstructured 
text to any programmatic tools (unless we have a method to unequivocally 
specify the semantics of any of our own made up formats...something like 
a DTD or Schema, but with added options to define what is a link, 
heading, etc, and their relative importance and relationship with each 
other).


Hmm...hope that made some kind of sense...it's too early in the morning 
for this sort of heavy talk ;)


--
Patrick H. Lauke
__
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com
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Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
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Re: [WSG] RE: Hot Topic: HTML design

[Alan Gutierrez]

* Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-08-16 00:12]:
> Great topic! 
> 
> I had some experience using xml / xslt earlier this year. I was
> fiddling with w3schools xslt tutorial which uses client-side xslt
> transformation and I finally saw what all the xml fuss was about.
> The content could be marked up meaningfully (according to the
> actual data) then xslt could lay out the content and css could
> style it.

> It was a real 'wow' moment as the xml penny finally dropped - a
> total separation of content and presentation, with no server-side
> shenanigans needed to convert the xml content. As soon as there is
> consistent browser support for client side xslt, we'll be able to
> deliver pure xml to the client and have it apply style and layout
> as the / browser chooses. True accessibility and universality. The
> web equivalent of 'Zen' ;)

There are plenty of places to put XSLT. It can be on the
browser, or it can be automated. You can use XSLT to cull XML
documents for links, for example. Or you can separate your
presentation on the server side, based on browser detection.

Which is why I'm interested in creating a better abstraction of
the structure of blog and wiki entries. With XML pipelines, I
can produce XHTML, RSS, text, PDF, or statitical views, like
links only, tables of contents, etc.

There are plenty of applications for XSLT, prior to it's
universal availability on the client side.

> In my experience it's not the content that's the problem - it's
> the outlying structure (header, footer, nav, branding) that gets
> in the way of true 'semanticity' (look Ma - I done made me up a
> new word!). If we had a way (no, not frames) to semantically
> separate the nav / branding fluff from the actual core content we
> would be set.

Here's an issue that I have a hard time getting away from...

I've cooked up an abstraction like so:


  Alan's Blogometer
  

  Syndicate (XML)
  http://www.technorati.com/profile/agutier";>Technorati
Profile
  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]

  
  

  Alan's Blogometer - Recent


  

  
What I Had For Lunch
2005/08/15 12:31:30
  
  
I had a cheese sandwich. Yummy!
  
  
permalink
comment
  

  

  


Quite abstract. No style information, merely conceptual. This isn't
the markup I used to write my blog either, that's far more compact.

The problem I face with this is that one generally cares about the
relative position of  content.

On most web pages, it's important to have navigation at a certian
visibility level. A gutter is a content area, not a navigation area,
I've decided. There you'll put recent entry links, Blog Ads or Ads
by Google, your blog roll, your del.icio.us links, etc.

But the format above is still another abstraction away from a blog
entry which looks like so:


  
What I Had For Lunch
I had a cheese sandwich. Yummy!
  


I transform blog.xml -> document.xml -> blogometer/index.html
  
I'm able to reuse XSLT along the way.

Then of course, I'm here to learn more about XML/XHTML/CSS so that
my final blogometer/index.html can be standards compliant, and I can
have even more control over presentation.

Brain dump. Toughts?

--
Alan Gutierrez - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- http://engrm.com/blogometer/index.html
- http://engrm.com/blogometer/rss.2.0.xml
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