RE: Linearizing Site Maps

Thats exactly what I meant Julian...

    /I may be taking the wrong approach but I always favor the <ul>
    approach with each <li> being a link to the page.

    Maybe this approach is why I see no functional difference between a
    site map and a table of contents./

I felt this method of using simple list markup to semantically enrich 
the information worked just as well as inventing a new set of tags to 
deal with it (sitemap). I also always list my links as a list as 
recommended by the W3c and so I naturally jumped to the conclusion of 
defined lists as I already use on one of my sites nav 
bars(www.westclub.co.uk). But I am growing slowly convinced there may 
significant advantages presented to future utilities in browsing through 
a predefined <sitemap> tag.

I suppose that by attaching the universal term "site map" to the layout 
of a site utilities such as search engines and other indexing programs 
can quickly navigate through the code to the precise required location. 
Also if a <sitemap> tag is recognised the menu can then be rendered and 
interpreted into any interface regardless of the utility. I have only 
began to reach this conclusion when ironically trying to argue my former 
case but as I started to code an example taken from poster "Isabelle's" 
site (hope you don't mind) and found that the true semantically 
hierarchy quickly became convoluted and hard to follow with the eye, so 
now I am starting to appreciate the future value of the site map.

_Isabelle's Site in a Semantically rich defined list._
<dl>
  <dt>Site Map</dt>
  <dd>
    <dl>
      <dt>Porfolio</dt>
      <dd>
        <dl>
          <dt>Web Design and Development</dt>
          <dd>Logos</dd>
          <dd>SEO</dd>
          <dd>
            <dl>
              <dt>Digital Art and Graphics</dt>
              <dd>Group one</dd>
              <dd>Group Two</dd>
              <dd>New Works</dd>
            </dl>
          </dd>
        </dl>
      </dd>
      <dd>
        <dl>
          <dt>FYI</dt>
          <dd>Browsers</dd>
          <dd>Promotion</dd>
          <dd>Web Design</dd>
        </dl>
      </dd>
      <dd>
        <dl>
          <dt>Resume</dt>
          <dd>Cover Letter</dd>
        </dl>
      </dd>
      <dd>Services</dd>
      <dd>Bio</dd>
      <dd>Contact</dd>
    </dl>
  </dd>
</dl>

-- 
Kevin McDonagh
Apple Tv Design

info@appletv.co.uk
http://www.appletv.co.uk

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 2004 11:23:07 UTC