RE: Disturbing trend in tables

I would concur with your evaluation that this is being done by a GUI editor
like Frontpage or Dreamweaver.  The 508 or WCAG will require people to
actually learn HTML, DHTML and CSS at a minimum.  That is not going to be
readily accepted by a vast number of developers who don't actually 'know'
these languages.  They've got a lot to learn in a short time.

On a darker note, programs like Bobby and, from what I hear, in-sight and
in-focus are supposed to be able to validate a web document.  The problem is
that this is basically impossible to do programmatically and requires
someone with a good knowledge of the aforementioned languages to view the
source code and validate parts of each document manually.  If you've never
looked at Frontpage documents source code you should.  Full of extraneous
tags and frontpage extensions that I'm sure will mess up every screen reader
there is.

I've been a programmer for 25 years and code in about 7 different languages.
IMHO, the worst thing to happen in the software development community was
the advent of these GUI interfaces which allow people to design and build
without actually learning the underlying elements that make up their page.
Seems like something important was lost when they did this.

Jim Fitzgerald

-----Original Message-----
From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman1@home.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 9:39 AM
To: wai-ig list
Subject: Fw: Disturbing trend in tables


thoughts?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Barrett, Don" <Don_Barrett@ed.gov>
To: <basr-l@trace.wisc.edu>
Sent: January 10, 2001 9:28 AM
Subject: Disturbing trend in tables


I am seeing a disturbing trend in table construction as evidenced by
the
following code.  This is taken from a chart listing pay grade and
salary.

<tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
      <td WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="17"><font FACE="Arial" COLOR="#000000">
        <p ALIGN="RIGHT">GS-1</font></td>
      <td WIDTH="49" HEIGHT="17"><font FACE="Arial" COLOR="#000000">
        <p ALIGN="RIGHT">15,701</font></td>
      <td WIDTH="50" HEIGHT="17"><font FACE="Arial" COLOR="#000000">
        <p ALIGN="RIGHT">16,225</font></td>

I am referring to the <p> paragraph markers which are being placed in
the
cell.  These screw up Jaws' ability to properly parse the table.  This
is
the second table I have seen like this in recent weeks.  I suspect
these <p>
tags are being generated by an HTML editor.  Can anyone shed some
light on
their purpose or necessity?

Don

Received on Wednesday, 10 January 2001 10:00:21 UTC