Re: New tags. (fwd) -Reply (fwd)

Once upon a time Chuck D'Antonio shaped the electrons to say...
>not to take that approach.  Instead I discuss with them the advantages of
>using structural markup.  I explain that they can focus on their content
>and its organization independant of how they realize it.  I explain that

I'm all for structural markup.  But I'd love to see presentation ATTRIBUTES
on them directly.

<P INDENT> would be lovely.

<TD> with bgcolor, alink, vlink, link, text and background I would cheer for.

One of the things that annoys me is browsers supporting bgcolor in tables,
and background in some cases - BUT NOT BEING ABLE TO SET TEXT COLORS!

I think that ANYPLACE you allow the background to be set, you should allow
the text colors to be set.  And this wouldn't be hard to do.

<LI SRC="fubar.gif"> would be widely applauded.

I don't want to see new tags like <PAGEBREAK>, and I don't use physical
markup when I author today (and I refuse to allow it on Livingstons web).
But having just a few of these would be fantastic.

>using stylesheets saves them countless editing if they choose to vary the
>presentation of class of document structures.  I try to make it have
>meaning for them.

I have never, practially, had to do this on a web.  I know SOME people do, 
fine.  And when I do need to change some tags globally - I have a perl
script that will tree the site and do it in seconds.

And I don't have to teach marketing people who can just barely use FrontPage
how to add styles.

If the authoring tools ever get there, then it would be feasible for me to
use it.  Personally I'm fine - but I don't author all, or even most, of the
content.

>home page publishers.  They're authors, designers, and publishers who
>intend to maintain their work as a contribution to the web and not their

Sadly, as a member of the HWG and reader of their lists, MOST of the 
'professionals' doing web page design just don't care about this.

>own ego.  And they're the managers and executives who could care less
>about whether their documents conform to some technical standard but
>understand that structural markup saves their employees editing time and

Can I borrow you managers?  Mine seem to like to make people do things the
hard way. ;-)

>opens their message up to the last ten percent of the web audience who
>don't have the tools to view the hottest in presentational markup.  I'm
>not bold enough to call that competitive advantage, but many might.

I'm in control of what tags get used here, at least that much is in my
control.  And, AFAIK, the entire site is Lynx friendly and we won an award
for being Speech Friendly for the blind.  You CAN do presentational things
and still degrade gracefully - if you know what you are doing.

-MZ
--
Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs
Phone: 800-458-9966 510-426-0770 FAX: 510-426-8951 megazone@livingston.com
For support requests: support@livingston.com  <http://www.livingston.com/> 
Snail mail: 4464 Willow Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588

Received on Friday, 17 January 1997 12:54:59 UTC