Re: Menus, navigation, and simplicity (Perhaps slightly off-topic)

Tina,

I agree with you, but my suggestion was not client side scripting, 
rather an enhancement to HTML or XHTML, hence I suggested contacting 
those working groups, and compared the process with including images, 
css and scripts, all of which are done by html.

Jonathan

On Monday, July 14, 2003, at 11:55  pm, tina@greytower.net wrote:

>
> On 14 Jul, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:
>
>> please pester more people with it, how about the html / xhtml lists?
>> @include menu.html is every bit as valid as linking to an image, css,
>> or script.
>
>    Personally I cannot agree with you. Using a client-side methodology
>    to include content and structure is a Bad Idea.
>
>    A web document is composed of, from the bottom up, structure,
>    content, scripts, and layout. If the structure is missing, users are
>    in trouble. If the content is missing, users are gone. If the 
> scripts
>    are missing, no big deal. If the layout is missing - well, it could
>    look prettier for sure.[*]
>
>    If you create a mechanism for inclusion on the client - say OBJECT -
>    and that mechanism doesn't work or isn't supported it is easy to
>    include alternate content. However that leaves you with updating two
>    versions. So we'll include the alternate content from the same 
> source
>    as the OBJECT-included content at the servers-ide. But that defies
>    the whole idea ...
>
>    Today you can use frames to include content. And you can put
>    alternatives in the noframes section. You can even include the same
>    content in both places - if you have a server-side or pre-processing
>    system.
>
>    Done right, client-side inclusion of content and structure still
>    leaves you with either doing the manual update job you wanted to
>    avoid, leaving users with out-of-date versions, or using a
>    server-side/off-line system to include the alternative. In which 
> case
>    you could just use the same system to include the content in the
>    first place.
>
>    Back to square one.
>
>
>  [*]
>   Yes, I know that layout can improve accessibility.
>
> -- 
>  -    Tina Holmboe                    Greytower Technologies
>    tina@greytower.net                http://www.greytower.net/
>    [+46] 0708 557 905
>

Received on Tuesday, 15 July 2003 02:30:47 UTC