Writing CSS/HTML that is Interoperable
The means by which your audience can visit your site are expanding. Internet browsers, television, and now even cell phones. But if your firm's web site is standards compliant today, you can relax. If not, read on...
Billups Design recently launched a standads compliant redesign of the Mid-American Printing Systems web site that, when viewed through a browser-ready cell phone for example, maintains its integrity. Even if we needed to change something in the presentation, we would simply modify the stylesheet to meet this challenge across all browser types and devices, like cell phones.
All web design companies should be ready for these changes as well, especially since many older phones are still being used by a large percentage of cell phone users and still resort to text-based presenttion of content.
The people at Web Monkey probably said it best:
"Standards-friendly design starts at the outset with the idea that if we code our pages in a certain way, they will work well in all web browsers, in handheld devices, in screen readers and in the devices of the future. If we design sites with interoperability in mind at the outset, we'll save ourselves tons of work later.
Separating content from presentation sounds perfectly nice, but the idea packs a bigger punch when you can see it in action. Our chem trails site will, of course, grow to become hundreds of pages long once The People catch wind of what's going on. Imagine if we want to redesign the site next year and we have to re-code every one of hundreds of pages of table-and-font-based pages. What a drag!
But if we separate the presentation from the content, our redesign becomes a simple matter of rewriting the stylesheet. "