On Saturday 04 June 2005 06:34 pm, you wrote: > well I tend not to bother with pixel perfect anyway, considering the > permutations that are available to the user these days, I am happy if the > layouts don't break when they are zoomed to say 600%, but the practice > discussed in the first article, I had been in effect ( but not as > efficiently ) using for sometime as a very pragmatic design aid. > > There are of course occasions when pixel perfect is needed, just that I > don't have that requirement.......however consider this: By removing the > browser defaults you are in fact empowering the user by allowing them to > write more of their own rules....[ obviously there is a practical limit to > this: would you want the header of every page to be displayed? - perhaps > not, although one could make a case for meta information to be displayed in > some instances eg academic or library users...] > I wouldn't have any need to remove browser defaults for the user at all. The user can do that should she want. My obligation as an author is to write a page which respects the definition of elements (nontable layout, not using headers for visual effects, etc) so that the page content can be accurately reflected by user agents and rendered in a pleasing, even if not duplicative, manner across a wide range of browsers. And also to use such RDF resources such as the meta tags you mentioned to provide machines with uri's which the end user can use to validate, in terms of the end users standards, the content of my page. In other words to write a semantic page.
What concerns me is the at times overwhelming focus on making standards design as visually obsessed as table layouts are. I'm afraid content is getting lost in presentation, again. I know lists like this focus on the issue of appearance but at times it seems overdone in the quest for a pixel here and there. The purpose of the semantic web is to make it possible for machines to accurately reflect the content of a page not to make flawless reproductions of pages across browsers or other devices which implement things in different manners. It provides a chance to shed the obsession by recognizing that vendors do things differently and that standards provide a way to bridge those differences in an acceptable manner. The whole idea is to make it possible for a user to find what they are looking for without having a search result based on a mysterious proprietary algorithm. SEO tricks are as bad a practice as having to hack and hack or browser sniffing. I recognize that for large commercial entities, such tricks will continue. But such sites aren't likely to ever be fully a part of the semantic web. Their name/brand is known. They have little interest, it seems to me, in providing meaningful RDF information or in using standards for valid page construction. And it seems unlikely that browser makers will force the issue. Quirks mode will remain available. It's the lesser and unknown sites, then, which benefit from the semantic web. And of course the end users who can find the information on those sites in a transparent manner. So development of the semantic web will be somewhat uneven and at times marginal. drew ____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] or use the web interface http://e-newsletters.internet.com/discussionlists.html/ Send Your Posts To: wdvltalk@lists.wdvl.com To change subscription settings, add a password or view the web interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/read/?forum=wdvltalk ________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
