Re: Personalized web pages

Hi, Gregory

Have you had a chance to look at the demo web pages I've put up?  They are
actually good examples of the difference between structuring a web page
on the basis of the semantic or concepts being conveyed by the page
versus structuring a web page for visual interest or impact.

The point you might have missed in my comments was that focus of the
conversation was on web pages personalized for each customer.
Personalized web pages is applying the technology of dynamically
generated web pages to create web pages specialized for the particular
user requesting the page.  This might include languages, layout, colors,
stock quotes, news articles, etc.  The online banking is old technology
compared to what is now being cooked up.

Something, I'm not quite sure I'm conveying very well is that style
sheets will NOT support transformation of web pages on the basis of
semantic content.  They only support transformation on structure.  Web
pages organized according to semantic aspects is a better design for
blind users.  In order to evaluate this, it is important to understand
the difference between organization according to visual impact and
organization according to semantic aspects.  (Also, remember that in
general once information is translated into HTML, the semantic
relationships are lost to most software reading the HTML as explained by
Tim Berners-Lee).

Just to be clear  ...  your note mentioned a generic user .  What was
talked about is that there would be NO generic user.  Each web page
is specialized in content, format, language, etc to each individual
user.

Scott


> i, too, have been investigating online banking myself recently, and the
> problems aren't presentational -- they are structural -- including (but not
> limited to) the misuse of structural elements to achieve presentational
> effects; the failure to provide textual equivalents for multimedia objects (in
> particular, failure to provide ALT text for graphically defined links, or for
> the AREAs defined for image maps); the use of style to convey meaning (i.e.
> changes in font color on forms to indicate required fields); etc.
> 
> therefore, i think you mis-characterize the issue when you write:
> 
> quote
> One of the questions was how to make it easy to use by blind people.
> I basically said that there are different views of the issues. Some
> blind people want to use the same web pages as sighted people even if they
> are harder to use.  Other blind people prefer that web pages
> be easy to use.  (As one blind user quipped "I'm willing to show the
> world one day a month that I can use the same web pages as sighted
> if I can have the rest of the month to take the easy route".  )
> unquote
> 
> the issue isn't as simple as you portrayed it -- the goal (my goal at least) is
> to have page authors concerned first and foremost with structure and content,
> so as to achieve a universally accessible and interoperable underlying
> structure for the document with which individual users can then interact
> according to their own preferences, as expressed either by the author's
> stylesheet or by a custom (local) stylesheet...
> 
> it's not a question of wanting quote to use the same web pages as sighted
> people even if they are harder to use unquote, but, rather, of ensuring that
> the structure and content is uniform and completely expressed, no matter the
> modality of whatever style is overlaid the structure and content...
> 
> the point is -- give me equal access to all of the content you wish to provide
> a generic visitor, in a consistent and well structured format, and leave the
> stylistic presentation to stylesheets, period
> 
> gregory

Received on Thursday, 16 December 1999 00:16:07 UTC