- From: Charles F. Munat <chas@munat.com>
- Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 20:32:06 -0800
- To: "'Charles McCathieNevile'" <charles@w3.org>, "WAI Interest Group \(E-mail\)" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Hola Charles, I agree that the sooner we get good authoring tools, the better. But in the interim, it won't hurt to encourage people to learn basic HTML. Even those who just want to post an occasional page or build a personal web site. Heck, they may find that they *like* HTML. It could hardly be easier! I also agree that professional sites should be built by professional developers. I think a step in the right direction would be a certification process for HTML. There are already certifications for XML, why not an HTML/CSS certification? Yes, I know that some colleges offer "Basic Web Site Design" certification, but they invariably teach obsolete code. We need an official certification based on a thorough knowledge of valid XHTML (including Basic and the modules) and CSS1 and 2 (and soon, 3?). We could even throw in RDF, P3P, and the DOM. Then the next step up would be to XML/Etc. or to SMIL/SVG/Etc. I'm especially horrified to learn that the county where Anne works lets pretty much *anyone* post to their official site. I think that there is a misunderstanding among many laypersons that the Internet is kind of like a kiosk. You just post any old notice on it. Just as there is usually a person assigned to oversee a kiosk or bulletin board, there should be a single person in charge of overseeing the official web site, and that person should be trained to do the job. Nothing should be posted without that person's approval. Not only will this encourage better code, but the site will look much more consistent (a usability, thus an accessibility, issue), and we'll only have ONE person to convince to use valid, up-to-date code and accessible design practices. In a sense, the Web *is* a kiosk. But it is a state-of-the-art kiosk, and as such it can provide that information in a manner accessible to a far wider range of people. Governments large or small have an *obligation* to put that capability to use so as to remove the barriers to full citizenship that now plague a substantial portion of our population. Chas. -----Original Message----- From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org] Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 7:51 PM To: Charles F. Munat Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org Subject: RE: Simplicity of Authoring and Accessibility Tools Hi Charles, you could have a look at some of the documentation for Amaya - it is intended to provide more or less what you are talking about, without talking about pointy brackets. (I am not sure if it talks about the HEAD section either - maybe I should work on that, or you could provide something since you have been given a leg-up on the rest <grin/>. The stuff I am thinking about is the User documentation section starting at http://www.w3.org/Amaya/User/HTML-elements/infoTypes - also available from teh contents section of the Amya Help page (it is at the end of that). Note that it needs work. But it was designed to exaplin how to create a document in Amaya that was good HTML, without asking the author to actually elarn HTML, just teh proper use of the tool. I agree with you that we should not be encouraging peopole to avoid learning stuff, but we should recognise taht there are a lot of people out there who won't read even the basic instruction page. So for getting a personal site on the Web, it is a question of making sure tools for beginners guide them to do the right thing. And for professional sites, it is a question of hiring professionals who actually know what they are doing. Unfortunately this is not always easy - most people commissioning content don't know what they should be looking for that distinguishes a design firm who really are good from one that looks goood. And it is not easy to chagne that. Cheers Charles On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Charles F. Munat wrote: Kynn wrote: "So, what's needed is an accessibility tool with no more knowledge necessary than that required to use Front Page or any other WYSIWYG tool for beginners." Charles replies: Yes, but since one doesn't yet exist, what's needed is for those who assemble web pages to read the instruction manual. The instruction manual is HTML, and it's a lot easier than programming your VCR. But just as most people won't read the instruction manual before they start to assemble their new ACME rocket-powered scooter, they won't learn HTML. But why on earth would we be condoning this? Why would you pat someone on the back for being too lazy to do even the smallest bit of preparation before setting up a web page? Why do we continue to act as if putting together a web page is as simple as using a photocopy machine? I honestly believe that the average person could learn basic HTML and CSS, enough for the vast majority of tasks on the web, in the *same* amount of time as it takes to learn how to use FrontPage. Funny how we have the time to learn the software, but not to learn this VERY SIMPLE MARKUP - NOT PROGRAMMING - LANGUAGE. Look: You have a box. It's called HTML. In it you have two smaller boxes. One is called HEAD, the other is called BODY. In the head you put the knowledge about the page (it's the brain of the page): this is called metadata. So in this box you have some file folders. One is TITLE. Another is META, which is an all-purpose folder. You also have LINK, SCRIPT, and STYLE, which are just places to hold related stuff like scripts or stylesheets. In the BODY you have your document. It has headers and subheaders. We put these in folders called H1 for the biggest header and H2, H3, and so on for the smaller subheads. Then we take the paragraphs and put them in P folders. And we arrange them in the same order that they would normally appear on the page. We can also make lists (if they're numbered we call them OL, if they're bulleted we call them UL), and we put each List Item in an envelope called LI. Or we can set up a data TABLE, which is just a chest of drawers (another sort of box, but with rows of drawers). Each row is a TR and it contains a bunch of drawers called TDs. If we really want to get detailed, we can go into the P folders and clip out words or phrases that have special meaning to us and put them in little envelopes. We call these envelopes EM if those words are kind of special, and STRONG if they really mean a lot to us. If we want to make them point to other pages, we put them in A envelopes (which stands for anchor, but could just as easily mean Arrow). Now, in FOUR LOUSY PARAGRAPHS I've covered the most significant aspects of HTML. Give me two pages and I'll explain attributes, throw in forms and even some lesser used items like definition lists. So let's get real here. Which is easier: learning basic HTML and CSS or learning how to use FrontPage? I think it's a pretty close call. Yes, some people will resist. Some will insist that they just can't figure HTML out. They fear it. But people fear learning new applications, too. My mother refuses to learn Word because it's just too much trouble. I myself have never really bothered to learn Excel. But that doesn't mean we should be ENCOURAGING this behavior. I think we should say clearly: Well, you can use FrontPage, but it will cause problems with accessibility, so you'll need to learn a little HTML to correct them. But if you're going to do that, why not just skip learning FrontPage and just learn the HTML? It's not difficult. Of course it would help if there was a simple HTML tutorial (I mean SIMPLE) that didn't teach all sorts of bad coding practices and proprietary or deprecated code. Until we get the ideal authoring tool (IF we get it), perhaps we should be putting together such a site. One that doesn't even mention all the tricks and workarounds, but starts with the structure of the document, keeps it as simple as possible, and then explains how to use simple CSS to add formatting (with specific caveats related to browser incompatibilities). In fact, I'm so tired of arguing this topic on this list that I'm going to do something truly insane: I'm going to just shut up and build such a site. Put my web pages where my mouth is, so to speak. It won't be anything fancy, but I'll detail the basics of HTML and CSS. Then maybe others on this list will be so kind as to provide feedback and suggestions. Give me a couple of weeks to a month. I'll post a URI when I get a draft in place. Charles F. Munat Seattle, Washington -- Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia until 6 January 2001 at: W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Thursday, 18 January 2001 23:33:39 UTC