Re: Newbie - Design approach?

Hello, Hilma

> I'm new to your list, and fairly new to web design

 Welcome to the list :-)

>
> "What i want is"
> - a document, a chart, or some thorough explanation and description of a
> design approach;
> I'll write it if there isn't one, but i don't have the information and
> experience that that would take.

There is no one answer to your questions. People's approaches  depend on
their priorities, which in turn will be set in part by the audience and
purpose of a given site and in part, I imagine, by a designer's own
preferences. I have a strong preference for the simple myself.

One approach would be to write the page initially in plain html or xhtml
using only logical/ structural (not presentational) tags that are
universally supported. (On the web you can find many charts showing which
tags are supported by which browsers. One such I found in Google  is at
http://www.ncdesign.org/html/list.htm  - searched on "HTML browser chart")
Then you can add appearance via style sheets,  and extra functionality via
scripting, for those whose browsers support them. If possible everyone
should have minimal access, in my view (you will make your own decision
where the cutoff is). You could keep a copy of your initial page and provide
link to it as a plain text page. You should probably validate at each
level...produce, validate; add, validate; and so on. That way you can tell
who you're leaving behind with each addition.

To increase accessibility, lay out your pages in logical order; in styling,
use relative sizes to accommodate the needs of various users or their
machines; lay out table data so it reads well horizontally; and not only
validate but check your results  against accesssibility guidelines [ see the
Bobby validator  at http://www.cast.org/bobby/ ]


> I want backward-comptibility;
> but i also want W3C validation, which means using deprecated tags until
> browsers can use all CSS2 tags, which my reading tells me that even
IE6/NS6
> cannot, in all cases.

There are not that many deprecated tags. FONT is a big one, and I believe
you can get font styling through css with no trouble and save yourself a lot
of work at the same time, as it doesn't need to be repeated with each new
paragraph or table td. It's more important that the page doesnt break in an
old browser than that it looks nice.

 Here is a general chart showing which browsers/versions support html,
dhtml, javascript etc. [
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/reference/browser_chart/ ]

You dont need to use all the css tags in existence-- use the ones that work.
[ See http://www.webreview.com/style/css1/charts/mastergrid.shtml ] In
addition to the cited chart, this website has much information on css
http://www.webreview.com/style/index.shtml

I'd recommend creating a simple style sheet using commonly accepted style
rules and setting it with an external link. This would be the "fall back"
style sheet (just as your plain logical html markup is the fall back for a
non-css-enabled browser). Cute bits that aren't widely recognized can be
applied as local styles via the DIV tag  or the SPAN tag (which has not been
deprecated to my knowledge; it is used to specify inline exceptions to the
main style declaration; as  DIV is used to specify block level exceptions.
Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding of how
the cascade works.

I would pick the most advanced level of html you can, considering what
you're trying to do. Lets say you select xhmtl; use that in the dtd in your
code and validate to that standard.

If you have created a basic page  and users can link to it, I dont think you
need worry about people who have turned off tables. That only happens with
Opera (as far as I know) and that's their choice, for whatever reason.
Whatever else you may do with scripts, style sheets, images etc., every page
should contain contact information  and the main site url be written out so
it would show up if printed.

I hope this gets you started and is the kind of thing you were looking for.

Regards,

Pam Shorey

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