Re: Techniques that are 'dicey'

I entirely concur with Charles' comments and would only add that most of
the techniques listed in the document are easy to implement and will
substantially improve the usefulness of a web site for a significant
proportion of visitors.

The new structure of the guidelines attempts to derive the detailed
recommendations from basic principles in a way that minimises the number
of distinct guidelines. The techniques then provide specific methods
whereby the requirements specified in the guidelines can be satisfied. The
table which summarises the guidelines also offers an excellent overview
and makes it possible to ascertain which items are of the highest
priority.

So long as the guidelines are clear and well organised, any competent site
designer should be able to follow them without an unduly inordinate
expenditure of effort. I have spoken to page authors in the university
context who have applied these principles successfully, indeed
enthusiastically. This task has been substantially simplified by the
tendency to generate web pages dynamically in the server, with templates
providing the basic, uniform structure and with the content of each
documented being inserted automatically by means of a script or "include"
directive. This approach even allows different versions of the same
page to be generated based on the user's preferences, and eases the
maintenance burden.

Received on Thursday, 12 November 1998 18:12:47 UTC