RE: [WSG] newspaper format

[Patrick Lauke]

> Giles Clark

> Just a quick question; Why should you avoid presentational 
> class names?

It goes back to the idea of separating content and presentation.
Your classnames should reflect what the element they're applied to
*is* (its qualities, if you will) rather than *how* it's displayed.

Imagine, for instance, that you decide later on that your layout needs
to be different. Rather than recode all your HTML, you want to simply
be able to change your CSS. Say you recode the CSS to a single column
layout. Now, you have pieces of HTML marked as "leftcol" or something
(can't remember your original URL, so going from memory), which now
don't mean anything anymore. Take it to an extreme (and I speak from
experience, having inherited a rather large site which used this
exact thing) and imagine somebody defining a class called "redtext"

.redtext { color: #f00; }

Great, but a year down the line they decide they want to change the
colour to green...so what do they do? They just change the CSS

.redtext { color: #0f0; }

So now you have a class called "redtext" which makes your text green.
At the very least, this becomes a maintenance nightmare. Yes, from a
technology/syntax point of view it's not an issue (the browser doesn't
care either way what the actual name is), but it makes life difficult
for you, the maintainer.

See also http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/goodclassnames

Hope this makes sense,

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
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RE: [WSG] newspaper format

[Lea de Groot]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 12:54:21 +0100, Giles Clark wrote:
> Just a quick question; Why should you avoid presentational class names?

Well, a pretty simple example is:



 .. some content ...



 ... some other content ...




One major point of CSS is that we can change the layout with changing 
the markup.
When we first designed this page we had leftCol on the left and (duh) 
rightCol on the right.
Then the client got to thinking and wanted to switch them around.
Not only is this a *sigh* but its also an *oops* because once we are 
done, our markup will not only not be semantic (for some values of the 
word) but it will be misleading for the next poor sod that maintains 
this page.

Names which indicate what a block is doing or what it contains are far 
better and useful than names that store potentially transient details 
about the block

HIH!
Lea
~ looking for a permanent position in Brisbane. Contact me for CV.
-- 
Lea de Groot
Elysian Systems - I Understand the Internet 
Search Engine Optimisation, Usability, Information Architecture, Web 
Design
Brisbane, Australia
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RE: [WSG] newspaper format

[Ricci Angela]

Hi, Giles

Just because if you do, you do not really separate content from 
presentation... If you say that a title is red, 12px and you call it "red12", 
after the site's redesign, for exemple, the title will be Black, 14px, bold 
and your style name obsolete. Instead, call it "title"... or, better, use 
"Hx..." (in the case of titles, of course).

Cheers!
Angela

-Message d'origine-
De : [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] la
part de Giles Clark
Envoyé : vendredi 15 avril 2005 13:54
À : wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Objet : RE: [WSG] newspaper format



Patrick H. Lauke wrote:

>You should avoid presentational class names. May be overkill, but 
>possibly opt for something like class="firstsection"

Just a quick question; Why should you avoid presentational class names?

Giles




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RE: [WSG] newspaper format

[Giles Clark]

Patrick H. Lauke wrote:

>You should avoid presentational class names. May be overkill, but 
>possibly opt for something like class="firstsection"

Just a quick question; Why should you avoid presentational class names?

Giles




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Re: [WSG] newspaper format

[[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

Bob,

Looks good on Mac (OSX 10.3.8 15 inch G4 PowerBook Firefox / Safari)
and PC (XP Firefox / IE).  3 col xhtml  is tricky, I know!

In case you are interested in an actual 3 column newspaper website in
xhtml check out the San Francisco Examiner at
http://www.sfexaminer.com/ .

Good Luck,
Brian

On 4/14/05, designer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Guys and gals,
> 
> I have been trying to present the information relating to a novel in a more
> interesting style than 'just text' or indeed three columns, and have
> experimented with a sort of newspaper style. The newspaper is a fictitious
> one which is mentioned often in the novel, and my effort can be seen
> (in isolation from the rest of the site) at:
> 
> http://www.treyarnon.fsworld.co.uk/bren/newspaper/news.html
> 
> The original design I produced and am modifying can be seen at
> www.novelnovella.com .
> 
> I have used floats (of course!) and the 'layout is supposed to work like:
> 
> banner
> header
> leftcol   rightcol
> banner
> leftcol rightcol
> etc
> 
> I would be most grateful for any general feedback : does it work as a
> design? Does it work (esp on MAC) as it's supposed to?  Is there anything
> glaringly bad about it? You get the idea. It works for me in FF1.0, IE6,
> IE5.5, Opera 7, all on PC.
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> Bob McClelland,
> Cornwall (U.K.)
> www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk
> 
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> 


-- 
Brian Ussery
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

b e ussery imagery co.
http://www.beussery.com
706.296.3446
905.935.4396f

be unlimited!
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Re: [WSG] newspaper format

[Patrick H. Lauke]

Paul Novitski wrote:

You should avoid presentational class names. May be overkill, but 
possibly opt for something like class="firstsection"

--
Patrick H. Lauke
_
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
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Re: [WSG] newspaper format

[designer]

Thanks Paul,

- Original Message - 
From: "Paul Novitski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "webstandards group" 
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 1:26 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] newspaper format


[snip]

> Bob,
>
> Your two-column 'newspaper' format works for me cosmetically but not as
> markup.  I would replace this markup:
>
>  
> First paragraph.
>
>Second paragraph.
>  
>
> with this:
>
>  
> First paragraph.
> Second paragraph.
>  
>
> You seem to be using the line-break tags to control presentation from
html,
> but I can't see why you'd need to do so given your XHTML+CSS toolset.
>

You are right of course, and I knew I had work to do on getting things
'proper'. I used the breaks as an easy stop gap whilst sorting the layout -
the paras were reduced to no spacing because of my *{margin : 0; padding :
0} declaration at the top of the CSS.  I've added a bottom margin to the
paras now, and deleted the breaks.

Thanks too for the John D. Berry link too - Interesting!

Bob McClelland,
Cornwall (U.K.)
www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk

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Re: [WSG] newspaper format

[Paul Novitski]

At 04:44 AM 4/14/2005, designer wrote:
I have been trying to present the information relating to a novel in a more
interesting style than 'just text' or indeed three columns, and have
experimented with a sort of newspaper style. The newspaper is a fictitious
one which is mentioned often in the novel, and my effort can be seen
(in isolation from the rest of the site) at:
http://www.treyarnon.fsworld.co.uk/bren/newspaper/news.html

Bob,
Your two-column 'newspaper' format works for me cosmetically but not as 
markup.  I would replace this markup:


   First paragraph.
  
  Second paragraph.

with this:

   First paragraph.
   Second paragraph.

You seem to be using the line-break tags to control presentation from html, 
but I can't see why you'd need to do so given your XHTML+CSS toolset.

Tangentially, you might be interested to see John D. Berry's recent work 
with a two-column digital book (in PDF format, not html): his article on 
the design process is at http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/22736.html

Regards,
Paul 

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