Apple's iWeb - attractive to authors but producing bad pages (was: Legal Precedent Set for Web Accessibility)

> This tool, iWeb 1.1.1, is generating "XHTML" that essentially only

It appears to come from Apple!

> In this case, I think it will actually validate (the tool ensures
> well-formedness and sticks alt="" on all foreground images), but

Looking at another page <http://www.rowan-cottage.co.uk/Site/Articles.html>
which praises this tool as an easy way to create web pages, it doesn't
even guarantee well-formedness, at least when people start using scripting.

> Basically people can generate very bad HTML that they think is very 
> good "HTML" by using the tools that are available to them.
> 

The particular claim to fame of this tool seems to be that it produces
fixed layout pages without using tables (but by using absolute
positioning and pixel sizes).

The problem of bad pages is also the responsibility of tool producers
(and, though not discussed here, writers of popular web design books).
Even blue chip software companies can produce tools that make the production
of low accessibility pages very easy, and the average author will not
understand that they are doing anything wrong.

Received on Sunday, 10 September 2006 21:13:32 UTC