Patrick Lauke wrote:
Well folks, here's a crazy idea: let's start some good
discussions on the principles of web standards then.
We need a bit of a catalyst to get things started. Any hot
topics anybody's got at the moment?
With the recent departure of a member who found this forum boring I
thought I'd open up a discussion on html design.
First, let me explain what I mean by html design.
One of the tenets of web standards design is the separation of content
and presentation. The benefits of this are often explained in terms of
easy site updates, the ability to change the visual design by simply
updating the CSS, and improved accessibility. All good stuff, and
increasingly (as we know), web sites are produced where content is on
one file (html) and the presentation is in another (CSS)
Another idea related to web standards is that of semantic markup, where
markup is used to give the document structure - after all, html is a
structural language - and the ultimate goal is to create a web that is
usable by both machines (semantic web) and people.
So, when I use the term html design I am talking about how a web page
is marked up, not only in terms of separating presentation and content,
but how the document appears without reference to the visual design.
By and large html design is not something happening in practice.
Documents are marked up, and sometimes even the content refers to, the
visual design. Document elements (both the tag and 'information chunk'
variety) are placed in the source order according to how easy they are
to position in the current visual design.
Arguably, we need better browsers that can make the distinction between
document content, navigation, and metadata, but isn't it about time we
markup document's for the content without refering to the visual
design, and separate out the navigation and other stuff a bit more?
kind regards
Terrence Wood.
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