css layouts, web standards

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McGruff
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Post by McGruff »

Gen-ik wrote:If there was one true standard that everyone had to follow then things may change. Who knows, one day it might happen... if we're lucky.
You've probably seen this but others reading the topic might not:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

Actually I'm happy to accept the odd special case which can't (or won't) follow standards. It's a part of life that some people make their own rules - which maybe later are adopted as standards (either that or they wind up tied to a tree by the neck). There's always a tension between conformity and individualism.

However, I think that for every webmaster who claims that accessibility limits their options, there's probably only one in a thousand for whom that's actually true.

Even then it's always possible to fork the site with a text only version. A screen reader could convey something about a Vermeer masterpiece - even just to say that "Vermeer had an astonishing understanding of light". A blind person will never be able to see the painting but at least they get to understand a little bit more about Vermeer and why he is a renowned artist.

If accessibility wasn't compulsory I probably wouldn't have made the effort to learn about it. I'm glad it is though, not least because in the end it teaches you to write better code.
Gen-ik
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Location: London. UK.

Post by Gen-ik »

McGruff wrote:I think that for every webmaster who claims that accessibility limits their options, there's probably only one in a thousand for whom that's actually true.
True, and I think this is down to experience. For example when I first started trying out Strict XHTML I was cursing every 5 minutes because (at the time) I felt that it was too restrictive and wouldn't allow me to do a lot of my usual tricks. But after sticking with it and finding 'standard' ways to do things I now create (most) of my sites in either transitional or strict XHTML and don't find it a problem... in fact I prefer it over HTML 4.

McGruff wrote:There's always a tension between conformity and individualism.
...yep, and I'm stuck between the two. I would like to make my websites as accessible as possible, but I'm also quite creative which means I like to experiment with different stuff on websites.

In some ways creativity is restricted by standards, but it's also restricted by compatibility problems, and other factors. As the old saying goes "rules are made to be broken" and people in the web development world will (need to) break the rules now and again in order to achieve certain results.

As technology moves forward though I imagine the 'rules' will be relaxed a bit anyway as different mediums become more powerful and more adapt at handling the more 'colourful' website code.
m3rajk
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Post by m3rajk »

Gen-ik wrote:
McGruff wrote:Accessibility is very important these days. You won't get much work if you don't generate good, accessible code.
I agree, but I also think that it will be a while before the internet is as accessible as we all want it to be, mainly due to compatibility problems and large corporations such as Microsoft and Netscape always bitching.

If there was one true standard that everyone had to follow then things may change. Who knows, one day it might happen... if we're lucky.
no one has to follow w3c, but only microsoft doesn't at least TRY to follow w3c, therefore following w3c is good practice.
m3rajk
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Post by m3rajk »

Gen-ik wrote:
McGruff wrote:I think that for every webmaster who claims that accessibility limits their options, there's probably only one in a thousand for whom that's actually true.
True, and I think this is down to experience. For example when I first started trying out Strict XHTML I was cursing every 5 minutes because (at the time) I felt that it was too restrictive and wouldn't allow me to do a lot of my usual tricks. But after sticking with it and finding 'standard' ways to do things I now create (most) of my sites in either transitional or strict XHTML and don't find it a problem... in fact I prefer it over HTML 4.
there wer parts of html 4 i didn't like at first, such as the font tags i was used to being moved into css, but now that xhtml is out i find myself skipping html 4 and claiming that i'm doing that while doing xhtml 1.0 transitional.... because i can fall back on things from html in some cases when i can't find the css, yet i found i accepted xhtml faster.. probalby from previous experience with xml that i had when i first learned html and is probalby why i was the only person i know that actually closed <p> tags way back then....
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