Internet Police, Part Two

With KompoZer, a WYSIWYG HTML editor, it doesn’t mater if you started web authoring yesterday or have years of experience. KompoZer is a tool for learning as well as a tool for creating web sites. My suggestion is that you immediately download KompoZer for free, fiddle with it a bit and publish your ideas to the web.

There are those who try to bully novice authors with the idea they will wind up in jail if they don’t conform to certain standards. In the first post of this series I said a novice has two choices for more complex layouts: (1) Master CSS or (2) Use tables to control layout. I cited a survey of web sites and expressed my suspicion that the number of web sites using tables for layout is much bigger than the 32% the survey suggests.

This post takes a look at standards and what we novice web authors need to do to use the Internet responsibly. You won't end up in jail if you don't. After all, there are no Internet police.

Standards Not Police

W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, states their mission, “To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.” The idea is that members, anyone who is anyone in information technology, agree on the best way to communicate over the web. When a consensus is reached we all work toward implementation and compliance. Everything is voluntary but the weight of the majority has some pull.

As with any media there are standards for communicating. There are standards for communicating with browsers and with your visitors. We need to look at those standards to be responsible. Wysi

W3C isn’t something new nor are their standards. Current HTML and CSS standards date to the late 90’s but even now many standards are not fully implemented. By not implemented I mean authoring tools and web authors who do not incorporate standards into their sites as well as web browsers that are not capable of rendering standards. Some browsers, for example, after ten years still have trouble rendering CSS.

…Mozilla's Gecko layout engine, the WebKit layout engine used in Apple's Safari, Opera's Presto layout engine, and the KHTML engine used in KDE's Konqueror browser - each of them is leading in different aspects of CSS. As of 2007, Internet Explorer remains the worst at rendering CSS as judged by World Wide Web Consortium standards… Wikipedia

Even though browsers haven’t fully caught up to the standards the self-appointed web police rant against novices using tables to control layout. As they peer down their long arrogant snouts they call tables “depreciated,” insist tables shouldn’t be used for layout, and belittle anyone who disagrees with their dictate.

“Depreciated” certainly sounds terrible but it only means the element may become obsolete in future versions of HTML. Depreciated means something has been replaced by a better way of doing things but it doesn’t mean it is prohibited. It also does not mean that something depreciated will not work on the web.

As for using tables to control layout W3C says: "Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables." (Emphasis is mine)

I happen to believe in the purpose of W3C and don't suggest for a minute that their snouts are long. There was always a difference when momma said "You better be a good boy" and "You should eat all your vegetables." W3C has the same convention:

SHOULD This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course.

We should eat all our vegetables and we should (maybe) use CSS. The fact that we don't doesn't mean we are wrong but we could be more right.

Right, More Right and Rights

My read of the rules we should live by when creating web sites clearly allows the responsible use of tables to control layout of our content. I have fiddled with CSS and understand the benefits it offers. Like the browsers that will read my content I haven’t mastered CSS. Like many novice web authors I have neither the time nor the inclination to learn how to code web pages. That was the entire reason for using a WYSIWYG editor like KompoZer.

I found and referred you to a site that does a great job in presenting and explaining how things are done on the web. That young lady convinced me she understands all she knows about web authoring. She said when discussing CSS, “The first thing you should be aware is that this site is not built using these techniques. The Web Design site on About (and all About sites) is built using tables, and until browsers that support CSS Positioning are more widely used, will be for the foreseeable future.” I happen to think she is 100% right.

I also happen to think that novice web authors can use tables right with a little thought and planning. The next part of this discussion deals with validation, testing to see if your page conforms to W3C criteria. We do have the obligation to do things right.

There is hope that someday this novice web author will be able to do things more right by using CSS and keeping layout separate from content. Mr. Cooke has helped that cause, as has Ms. Kyrnin. The biggest boost may have come from Kazé and the improvements he made in Cascades, the CSS editor in KompoZer. There is only hope for my mastering CSS because it is not a necessity and I am somewhat depreciated!

Clearly it would be more than right to use CSS but the absence of that knowledge should not deter you from exercising your rights on the web. I say again: Get a copy of KompoZer, get it done, and have fun in the process. The long snouts will probably continue to exercise their rights of free speech. Maybe some day they will exercise their right to remain silent.

Wysi

; .