Douglas MacKenzie said: > At 11:59 09/01/04 -0500, Andrew Macdonald wrote: > >> As the discussion for web sites based on standards seems to be >>falling into the usual web based battle about why should we use >> standards > > It certainly wasn't part of my argument. My point was if you want to > control the output of your content to different media it is better to do > this by holding > it all in a database not in a tagged document. Sean thought this > couldn't be done.
Whoa! I never said that! > I assure him it can. The last 30 large-scale websites > I have been involved with have all been built this way and the same > databases have been used for print output, CD-ROMs, touch screen > displays and, with appropriate XML filters, data exchange with other > applications and organisations. The way you have put it only makes sense to me if you're not dealing with documents or anything textual above the level of the phrase, e.g. titles, creators, dates, etc. for works of art that can be fed field-by-field into formatted output. But what would you do with a description of work of art running for several paragraphs, with titles and quotations that required specific formatting. It's great to have that in a database, but in what format? I deal with database-backed websites all the time, too, and our in-progress redesign is one step toward more dynamic database-driven content, but there is a difference between, say, a collections database and a content-management system. The former can be utterly output-agnostic while the latter has to store documents that can't be analyzed into fields except for metadata about the content, so you are going to end up storing the documents in something like HTML or XML. For my money, though, devices should serve the purpose the content and not the other way around. That includes not inventing another unnecessary document format when an existing one should do. So I get frustrated when something new comes out that can't handle HTML or XML. > Discussion of standards, though, has a deeper significance. This seems > to dominate in Web development in periods when creativity has dried up. > E-commerce salesmen in finance and insurance a few years ago were > using metaphors of shanty town building of websites being replaced by a > recognised building code in an attempt to woo conservative institutions > to reinvest in the latest Sun boxes and Oracle software: we've no new > ideas so buy some new kit in the meantime. This description has a very short historical horizon. The standards were always there at least in the form of the HTML DTD's since HTML 2.0, but ideas like validation were not on the radar of the the rapidly developing internet-culture. I never talk to e-commerce salesmen, so I can't say whether your right or wrong about that, but things like the Web Standards Project came from designers whose creative energies where being sapped creating multiple versions of pages for different browsers--not different devices, just different versions of the same device. It's a fight against moving targets -- why should providers of web content have to worry about tomorrows "inovation" from Microsoft? > I feel quite despondent about > museums and Web use at the moment: I can't remember when I > last saw a genuinely new idea implemented and things we talked about at > conferences 5 or 6 years ago are just being trotted out time and time > again: cauld kale rehet, which I trust is a phrase familiar to someone > called Macdonald ! This is a well-placed concern, I think we just have different approaches to the same problem. > > The most glaring deficiency, to me, is a general failure to use the Web > to create genuine educational experiences in museum websites and to > reach new audiences or even existing audiences in a way with which they > feel comfortable. Of course all institutions have different missions and > remits, and I don't pretend to know that of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. > The last US census, though, showed 28.1 million people in that country > speak Spanish in the home, only slightly more than half claimed fluent > English and 2.2m of these Spanish speakers live in NYC. Should engaging > this audience not be a higher priority than catering for those who > choose to use text-only Lynx browsers? Well structured, well designed web pages save time, effort, and money down the road. I know because our current web site is a nightmare to manage. Web staff is limited (to me and that's not all I do) so I can't even begin to think about translations until I remedy this situation. Valid markup, separation of content and layout are part of well structured and well designed web pages. In my experience, when you think about Lynx and the blind you tend to avoid other pitfalls that will rob your time and creative energies later. > I bet there are a few > people around the world who would be interested in reading about the > museum's Egyptian collection in a language other than English too. And, > if you do intend to produce a multilingual website, creation and > maintenance is an awful lot easier if all your content is in a database > with web-pages built on the fly. Again this doesn't seem to follow unless you're just talking about object data. A lengthy description of a work of art has to be marked up for the web whether it's in English or Spanish. -- Sean Redmond Brooklyn Museum of Art --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected]
