Structure, style, conent, presentation? - Why all the fuss?

[LazyJim]

I've just read an article from A List Apart and it has clarified a lot of the feelings I've had about web design - about the need for both good-looking web sites that are also easy-to-maintain and accessible.

I've mentioned in numerous cases about separating style from content.
The reason is that recent and future technology can be used to apply style while leaving the content structure intact.

Content is bland and meaningless without structure.
HTML is used to structure textual content, and enhances its usability and access ability. For example - <h1></h1> - these tags are used to indicate the fact their content is a top-level heading (very useful when reading/scanning the document, and also for search engines). But unfortunately it has been used incorrectly, by so-called web designers, to tell the browser to make the text very big.

A common misconception is that separating style from content leaves boring ugly pages, (or at the best, very plain ones).
The reality is (or will be when the technology works properly) that structured content can be presented in many ways simultaneously. And the many ways range from text-only (braille printers, text-readers...) to very attractive high-tech web sites.

Additionally, the acceptance of standards by web developers and their application in web pages actually gives you more control of the presentation of web pages.
How?
Simple, HTML is a structural language, there has previously been no way to specify style and presentation, but standards and technologies are being developed to do just that.

Wait a minute, why am I saying there has previously been no way to specify style and presentation?
The fact that browsers present content differently depending on its context (defined by structure, marked-up by HTML), was latched onto and used purely for the effect it had on presentation. All browsers actually display things differently to other browsers.
Which is why standards are needed so all browsers know how they should interpret the code we create, and so that we know what code yields the desired effects.
Also this pathetic attempt to control presentation prompted browser manufactures (Microsoft and Netscape) to invented extra HTML elements such as the <font> tag - an element of a structural language designed and used for specifying the presentation.
In hindsight, this was a two edged sword - it didn't provide the correct control and polluted the fine language of HTML, but it drove the advancement of the web in ways its inventor never imagined!
Now everyone has begun to realise this, the afore mentioned inventor of the WWW - Tim Berners Lee - who founded the W3C to sort things out. And just as importantly - the large companies (including Microsoft) involving themselves in the W3C's work.


Presentationalists may find Flash design fulfills their wildest dreams.
Structuralists might find XML their end to mark-up madness.
Realists will probably stick to XHTML, and CSS because it's a happy medium, tried and tested, with forward and backward compatability.
The works created by all of these three types of people will eventually integrate, interact, and co-exist in harmony.

Read the article i mentioned, and rejoice in the fact that web development is actually heading in the right direction.

[Thanol]

Can you please shrink the font or de-bold it?

[LazyJim]

yup, - jsut for you!
what resolution are you using, on my screen I need it bigger just to read it without a magnifying glass!

[Thanol]

Thanks , I'm on 1074x800 or something in that region.

[LazyJim]

1024x768? I supose it may have looked big in that - it definatly look far too bold, even on my screen, I think the font is not designed for large sizes.