Re: Some questions from CHI-WEB people

On Monday 24 December 2001 20:00, Scott Luebking wrote:
[...]
|   The mutiple version strategy probably requires less effort.  In the very
|   basic two version approach, one version can have a very fancy layout
|   using tables, etc, while the other "universal" version has the same
|   information in a very linear approach which only uses tables for data.
|   There can be significant increase in efficiency since people don't need
|   to learn CSS and figure out how to make it work on a variety of
|   browsers.  There is much less need to figure out how a page will degrade

It seems that there is an opinion around that you can make web pages without 
CSS.
This is terribly wrong - at least if we keep in mind modern browsers, like MS 
IE, Netscape/Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera.
Any of those browsers have *default stylesheet*.
(try # locate html4.css
/usr/share/apps/khtml/css/html4.css
or # locate html.css
/usr/lib/mozilla/res/html.css
if you run Linux)

This means that even on page like this:
<html>
<body>
<p>Hello, World!</p>
</body>
</html>
CSS properties are *calculated* for every element in DOM tree (html, body, p)

You don't need to write custom CSS for example like this, but still can 
notice that NN 4.7 will render "Hello, World!" in Times/Times New Roman, 
while MS IE - in Arial and Konqueror - in KDE's default font. 
It's like the fact that you can drive a car without knowledge of driving 
rules, but knowing some rules definitly helps. Especially if you see 
something like "STOP" sign in front of you, or traffic lights.

In fact, you don't need to learn CSS for example above but you still *will be 
using CSS*, wether you like it or not.

Besides, you can easily explain following changes added via CSS to newcomer, 
plus enhance document's perception:
<html>
<style type="text/css">
 /* add extra margin around body element and highlight body with lime border 
around */
 body { margin: 2em; border: 2ps solid lime }
 /* increase font size and make it bolder */
 p { font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold }
</style>
<body>
<p>Hello, World!</p>
</body>
</html>

Good point about CSS is you can always disable unnecessary element(s) by 
defining, for example, 
p { display: none }
-> than all paragraphs will disappear, and you will see only headers.

|   gracefully since the universal version doesn't use table to create a
|   fancy layout.  While some people may view fancy layouts, etc, as
|   being an additional layer, many people who request web pages see
|   the fancy layouts, etc, as being very core to the web site
|   and accessibility is the additional layer.
|
|   I would be very careful about saying "many things are hard".  A similar
|   view could be said by non-disabled people about disability issues.
|   I think a more useful way to look at it is to ask how can people work
|   together to help the various hard aspects of various people's lives.

CSS? :-)
|
|   Scott
|
-- 

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/

Received on Monday, 24 December 2001 17:16:35 UTC