> www.wired.com has got to be the perfect website on the net? Anyone else
> have urls of websites that has their html/css code so solid and robust it
> can also handle anything?
Hey Scott
Kind of two issues here:
- separation of presentation & content
- compliance with w3c standards
Both are different but also important. W3c standards are aimed at addressing
the first issue (presentation/content) but you don't need xhtml1 & css2 to
achieve that goal. Sometimes I think html4.01 & css1 will do it just fine
and are more practical.
On a recent job (www.bangitup.com.au) we aimed to get as close to both of
these objectives as we could with in reason. It was a good learning
experience but we were not 100% successful for a number of reasons.
Firstly to work to a strict design that will be consistent across all the
major browsers that have been released in the last couple of years you have
to get into some nasty hackery (like
http://www.tantek.com/CSS/Examples/boxmodelhack.html), which kind of defeats
the purpose (KISS). So... there are some presentation tables in there :(
Secondly we were on a limited budget & the whole exercise was something
James & I were tossing around for our learning purposes - it was not a
client requirement.
Thirdly as soon as content was added to the site by others using pretty
standard tools & methods it broke on stuff like "&" not being escaped to
"&" and coldfusion style comments coming through in the html. A while
ago I think you pointed out that wired had kind of lost the plot on its
compliance stuff & I think this is the same thing. It requires extra effort
& vigilance to keep it compliant.
All of these things are pretty typical snags that will be hit by almost
anyone trying to meet the two goals I mentioned above. On the whole I think
we (James esp.) did pretty well & learnt heaps, hopefully next time we can
refine it a bit more. I don't think its practical to wake up one day and say
"for this day on I will make future proof sites", but its good to start
playing with the ideas & getting ready for the day that browsers get their
end together.
Also to do this stuff you have to treat NS4 as a text only browser & expect
the layout to break completely.
As really good example sites, they are few & far between. The only people
who are really doing it right are people who are pretty vocal in advocating
the whole direction.
Check out:
http://www.cinnamon.nl - look at the code not the content (even degrades to
NS4 reasonably well)
http://devedge.netscape.com - they recently rebuilt without tables
http://www.meyerweb.com - head css geek at netscape
http://www.tantek.com - head css geek at microsoft
http://www.webstandards.org - advocacy
http://www.zeldman.com - freelance css & standards geek (& the only one of
this lot who can actually make it look good)
http://www.diveintomark.org - another css geek
http://www.hixie.ch
This last guy is ... I don't know, very, very, very clever but not really in
the real world. He has some strange ideas like "xhtml considered harmful"
which are well worth looking at before diving into xhtml.
For real everyday use right now I think html 4.01 is the only practical way
to go, but with a big emphasis on using css for presentation where ever
possible. If you need to have your content in an xml for whatever reason
(that's how your cms is built etc..) then by all means write xhtml code but
server it up with a html 4.01 doctype.
Why? Most of today's browsers aren't able to treat xhtml as xml (see
http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml) and there is only one small,
insignificant glitch (based on some old SGML syntax) that prevents xhtml
code from also being completely valid html 4.01, but this is ignored by
pretty much every browser and is probably going to be errata'd out of the
4.01 spec anyway.
Bah! I'm ranting again & have work to do but as you can tell I'm kind of
excited & frustrated & confused about the whole shebang. For everyday public
sites keep it simple, write good html 4 & css 1 (with some bits of 2) rather
than hacked up xhtml & css2 & keep content & presentation a separate as
possible. But play with the new toys & methods whenever you can.
Cheers
Mark
______________
Mark Stanton
Web Production
Gruden Pty Ltd
Tel: 9956 6388
Mob: 0410 458 201
Fax: 9956 8433
www.gruden.com
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