Ok...my last post on the topic (I think people are getting bored with me)...
> I'd like to play devil's advocate here. One of the intrinsically > different things about presentation on the web -- to say nothing about > alternative formats like WAP -- is that you have no idea what the > physical presentation parameters are going to be. Right. I agree. > For that matter, consider a cleverness I have detected on salon.com. > Since they break their articles across pages, some of their writers > build up to a "cliff-hanger" comment at the bottom of one page, to get > the reader to click-through to the next section of story. If > an author > cannot anticipate where that break will fall, how can he utilize it? Well, he/she needs to anticipate it happens after so many characters, but he/she doesn't need to know where on the screen it will appear. As you point out, you wouldn't know that anyways. It's going to show up in a different spot on a PDA vs. a 640x480 monitor at the library vs. someone sitting at home with a portrait 1200x1800 monitor. > If content is divorced from format, how can you anticipate and > accommodate the medium? Very true. But if you are going to design for a specific medium's format to begin with, then there's absolutely no reason for the separation argument as you will need to write unique content for each medium. You'll have to write a PDA article, a web article, a pdf article, a RSS article, etc. etc. The separation argument is important for repurposing content. If you are crafting content for specific media, then I completely agree that presentation and content need to be integrated. > You argue that one shouldn't. I certainly know why -- I am a > developer, > after all, and am inclined to feel likewise. But my understanding of > the craft of writing (I presume there are analogs in graphical design) > says that *is* a part of the craft, and not to be sacrificed > in the name > of "flexibility". Well, I'm certainly not a writer. That said, IMHO, if you are a good writer, you should be able to communicate eloquently with ASCII text. Good content can overcome bad presentation. The reverse is less true. If you have x units of employee time for both content and presentation, I'd always argue to maximize the content side of it. (And, for the record, I'm a graphic designer) In summary (I need to wrap this up as I imagine people are getting a bit bored...): Ehmad had a nice list of what a CMS should be used for: - help you define you content elements as you need - help you sharing and publishing information in different format - help you create as many pages as you want form specific content element - help users create and edit content NOT pages - Create Pages from content NOT content from Pages - CMS Manage the pages that are created by CMS itself NOT by user - provide Workflow and authorization in the content element itself NOT in Pages Any attempt at the content author trying to format content based on a specific presentation at the time of authoring makes most of the above bullet points moot. At that point, I believe the user needs to consider a document management model, or a simple page editing system. -Darrel -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
