Re: a small rant from a frustrated web mistress

On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Skill Zone wrote:

> > So far as I know, we are still looking to evolve better
> > conditional-placement or alternate-flow capability so that a
> > common source of content can be more multimode in this regard.

It means that we would like to be able to write a page, for example with 
a nvigation paragraph. We would then like to be able to say "if this page 
is being displayed on a screen, put the navigation paragraph at the top 
and bottom. If it is being read out loud, just read it out at the end. If 
it is being broken into small flip cards, put it on each card. (Or 
something like that) The trouble is we can't do that yet. But we're 
working on it.

Charles

Writing guidelines is difficult. Where people are going to use them 
often, in many contexts, it is important to get them right. The trouble 
is that the first pass at this is usually very dense reading. Not 
impossible, but very hard. Read a carefully-framed law, for example. 
Until the guidelines are really settled, it is hard to cut them into 
digestible chunks. But then, who learns HTML 4.0 by reading the 
Specifications of the language (other than me and a few other odd people) 
and who does it by reading a book, which might be 5 times as long, not 
quite as perfectly correct, but a million times more comprehensible?

Just some thoughts.

Received on Wednesday, 15 July 1998 19:05:39 UTC