Re: Header, Footer, and Sidebars

>This is exactly what Andrew's example [1] provides.
>

My thoughts exactly.

>No, HTML is not a presentation language.  However, you can use DIV to mark 
>a block as somehow different (as in Andrew's "footer", etc.), and then use 
>CSS2 to position that block in a permanent location along one edge in a 
>graphical agent.  Again, that's what Andrew's example does.

Please, no more presentation tags. Thank you.

The real "genius" of using CSS to *present* the user with scrollable areas
is that:

1) They are contained within a single page, therefore do not break the
basic unit of navigation: the web page.

2) In theory, almost any HTML block element is a candidate for scrolling.
Therefore, if you set dimensions on the elements you wish to possibly
scroll, they will as needed and only as needed. This means that someone on
a large high resolution display may see your page as if it were printed in
a book, while someone with a small lower resolution display will have
scrollable areas available to bring content within view.

3) Power. With only the change of one property in an attached or imported
style sheet you can make an are scrollable. Try that with frames.

>>docking info and render the page top to bottom.  This page would be
>>perfectly readable by any user agent, old or new.

I hope in future to offer a CD-rom like experience for parts of my site,
while retaining accessibility of pages and easing maintenance through CSS
and OBJECT inclusion of table of contents. An example is at
http://www.city-gallery.com/earlyphoto/reference/review/toc.html

Keepers of Light is the only example page:

http://www.city-gallery.com/earlyphoto/reference/review/crawford.w.keepers.h
tml

I recently was forced to uninstall IE4.0, so I'm looking at the page in
IE3.x and it gives a warning on the OBJECT include. I hope that MS will
allow the inclusion of standard "text/html" types in additon to their
"scriptlet" type.

This page looks and operates much the way I envision it in IE.40 and yet it
is still plainly readable in Lynx.

In fact, I have a different style sheet for print media that does away with
the navigation and hides the table of contents making for a simple
text-oriented page ready for the printer. You can have a screen-oriented
style sheet that defines parts of the document as scrollable areas and
allows display of included material.

>I can destroy any document's value with ignorance, even if it uses only 
>HTML 2.0 and no CSS.

Exactly how to apply CSS or structure markup is not something that should
be dictated---there is too much room for disagreement. It's up to the
author to be responsible, not to expect the HTML standard to save them.

Steve

   _/ Steve Knoblock                      mailto:editor@city-gallery.com
   _/ City Gallery                            http://www.city-gallery.com/
   _/ Member NSA               http://www.3d-web.com/nsa/nsa.htm

Received on Wednesday, 26 November 1997 11:50:25 UTC