Re: [WSG] Semantic Sanity Check

[Kay Smoljak]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:28:47 -0800, Ben Curtis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> These are smart people I'm working with, but they think solely about
> presentation. I'm looking to push them on just the right concepts. Did
> I miss any? Am I off base on some?

I started doing exactly what you're trying to do about 18 months ago,
albeit with a smaller team (I think there were about four coders back
then). I am pleased to say that now, we are a fully
standards-compliant shop and nothing new goes out the door that
doesn't validate and have basic accessibility measures. New hires are
vetted extensively for their attitude towards web standards - even the
designers who don't actually write any HTML are expected to be aware
of the issues.

However, it's a slow process. I'd say it took about a year to get
everyone thinking in the right way - and that meant lots of
"transitional" table-based layouts and pages that didn't quite make
the grade went out the door. You have to be very careful, as pushing
the validation issue especially when someone's already under pressure
can turn them against the whole idea very easily.

I found that I needed to be around to help out with browser issues a
lot - at first the attitude to layout problems very much is "it works
fine *my way*... if you want it *your* way, you'd better come up with
a fix yourself". After a while though that goes away as people get
more empowered with what they're doing. I recommend buying a few books
to have around - my copy of Zeldman's book in particular has been
around the office a few times, in fact I haven't even laid eyes on it
since October.

As for your document, if search engine optimisation is important in
your work at all that's a great way to explain the importance of
semantic markup - Google sees "Widgets"
and says "yep, some text". Google sees "Widgets" and says
"aha! I've found a page exclusively about Widgets!".

Another important thing is to demonstrate tools that will make their
lives easier like the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar and the
htmlhelp.com crawling validator, and make sure everyone knows how to
get them and how to install them.

Good luck!

-- 
Kay Smoljak
http://kay.smoljak.com/
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[WSG] Semantic Sanity Check

[Ben Curtis]

I'd like some insight as I compose instructional materials on something 
I'm learning myself. I have a philosophy/strategy statement, and sample 
pages I will pull code samples from. I'd like any feedback you wish on 
both or either.

I lead a couple teams of coders and designers. Primarily, they make 
sites with mixed tables and CSS rules. I'd like to introduce them to 
the ideas I've encountered in this group, where the XHTML can be 
semantically marked up to describe what it is, and then styles describe 
how it looks based on what it is.

Before I create code samples for them to gnaw on, I want to run the 
basic ideas past the thoughtful folks in this group.

http://www.bivia.com/sandbox/semantic_markup/
I hope to introduce them to these ideas:
-> habitually validating documents
-> defining classes and ID-selected styles based on what a thing is 
(thinking less about presentation)
-> using h# tags instead of spans and styles
-> restyling lists
-> choosing when an image is content and should be in an img tag, or 
presentational and might be better as a background-image

These are smart people I'm working with, but they think solely about 
presentation. I'm looking to push them on just the right concepts. Did 
I miss any? Am I off base on some?

The companion pages where I worked out these concepts are here:
http://itgtradingcards.bivia.com/
http://itgtradingcards.bivia.com/page2.html
They validate as XHTML1.1, and the CSS hacks that would not validate 
are imported using @import code that the validator ignores -- so the 
CSS clears, and the browsers still are ok. I viewed them both at 
various default font sizes, and we target full design realization in 
these browsers:

Win XP: IE6, Firefox 1/Gecko, Opera 7.5
Win 98: IE5, IE5.5, IE6, Firefox 1/Gecko, Opera 7.5
MacOSX: IE5.2, Safari 1.2, Firefox 1/Gecko
MacOS9: IE5.2
Minor design bugs are allowed in IE5 (Win/Mac). The style-less display 
should be just as usable, although we don't put any effort into 
un-styling things for bad browsers. For style-less review, we test in 
Lynx and Firefox (Web Developer -> disable CSS).

Some concerns I have (besides the designer insisting on images in the 
navbar):

- the method of importing the styles (causes a FOUC in Safari?)
- navigation code last, with a "skip to" link
- proper use of dl for the "Events" listing
- why I can't get the footer hr to display the same in Win IE as other 
browsers

Thanks for any tips.
--
   Ben Curtis : webwright
   bivia : a personal web studio
   http://www.bivia.com/
   v : 818 507 6613

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