Re: Single vs. multiple sites for accessibility

At 10:20 PM +0100 2001/7/05, David Woolley wrote:
>  > If that's not an option for you (and, by the way, it SHOULD be; the
>  > idea of a huge site full of static pages is a VERY dated concept and
>It's interesting how software goes in circles.  HTML was designed to
>replace gopher, because gopher looked too much like it had been generated
>from a database, but HTML allowed one to mix in links in the correct
>context in the text.  Once you start mechanically generating HTML from
>structured data, you are repeating the circle, rather than making real
>progress.

I'm not sure I agree with your assertions here that "HTML was designed
to replace gopher because it looked like a database," nor do I see that
as a lack of progress.

Nearly all major web sites these days are generated mechanically from
databases, by the way.  It allows for separation of primary content
from navigation, from an interaction model, from presentation.  This
is actually a good thing, as there's potential for so much more to
be done -- such as server-side transformations to meet user needs.

This isn't repeating anything, but it's not necessarily something
completely new either, David.  I'm not sure why you don't view the
move from static pages to structured data as progress.  Can you
explain a bit more as to what you mean?  Perhaps we're not talking
about the same things here.

>My own perception of the way the W3C tries to go is that they would
>want the master document to be a public XML document, not one hidden in
>the server, and to use style sheets to customise it to different formats,
>client side.

Client-side transformations are not the only way, and they aren't even
the only "W3C canon" way.  See, for example, CC/PP -- which allows for
tranformations to occur on the server, on the client, or anywhere in
between (proxies, etc).

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network
Tel +1 949-567-7006
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Received on Thursday, 5 July 2001 20:22:26 UTC