Re: Stumped!

I guess if you are only writing your pages for IE 5 and NN5 and Opera, you
are fine with adapting your document structure to your HTML display.

Then, I guess you can just continually rewrite that document for text
browsers (if you intend to provide content to those with various needs that
preclude graphical browsers), WAP-enabled devices, print formats, and the
various other platforms on which your document can be displayed.

Its a matter of perspective.  The document is is primary, and the display
format secondary.  You are absolutely correct that there really is very few
HTML documents online that meet this goal...but its something I strive
towards with each new one I produce: the day when one document can be served
through multiple media formats...

(PS: old browsers and platforms are still much in use throughout the world.
Not that it matters, if you don't have to use them, and you are only
designing for an audience where its not a concern...just wanted to make sure
those people got representation here...).

Darrell

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Benoit <pbenoit(at)triton-network.com>

That's all well and good if we write "dumb" pages, but what's considered to
be valid structure and what's considered to be valid HTML are sometimes
completely different things.

Do I really care if my webpages will load correctly in a text only browser?
No, of course I don't, and if I went over most of your pages I'm sure that
I'd see the same thing.  Excluding Harold's of course. ;)

So there's style to the structure.  What good is the structure if you can
completely alter it's style?  You make it whatever you want by defining it.


Non-CSS capable browsers?

Is there really such a thing anymore?  Sure, lets argue that we all have to
spend an extra week twinking our pages so that they view the same in
Netscape 2 as they do in IE 5.5.  Ya right, that'll happen.

Backwards compatability.  All well and good.  More like feelgoodism, than
having any use.  "I'm making my page compatible with the universe, no matter
what they view it with, and I'm maintaining the integrity of the web by
doing so!"

Blah, what a bunch of hooey.  Sounds like backwards moving to me.

So is HTML structure really that important?  Will you really get ranked that
much better if you use <H3> instead of <P class="myH3class"> ?  I doubt it
would effect your ranking THAT much.  Imagine if you used no header tags at
all!  You'd never get ranked! ;)

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