[bcab] Re: Links on web pages and screen readers

    Learning to control the layout and presentation of a web page with CSS
is the tricky part. Particularly if you're used to doing it the old way,
it's quite a steep learning curve. Once you've got the hang of it though,
it's usually a lot quicker.
 
    One of the good things about CSS, if it's used properly, is that you can
build your website in HTML and leave it in tact. Then write as many
different style sheets as you like to change the way it all looks. 
 
    What this means is that providing you separate the two things entirely,
you can put all your information into paragraphs, lists, headings and so
forth, using HTML, and leave it there. When the time comes to change the way
your website looks, all you have to do is rewrite the CSS, not the HTML.
 
    A working example of this is on my website. When you first visit the
website, you're presented with the default colour scheme. If you visit the
style switcher page, you can select another colour scheme entirely.
http://www.tink.co.uk/content/style_switcher.php
 
    Of course, you'll need to use whatever key commands tell you about
colour on web pages with your screen reader. In this case, the change is
purely visual.
 
    In terms of XHTML versus HTML, there isn't a great deal in it to be
honest. HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 both work well with CSS. XHTML was developed
as part of the XML languages. I won't bore you with the technicalities of
which is the best, the arguments are long and usually tedious and make
relatively little difference in the real world at present.
 
 
    The basic idea is to use either HTML or XHTML to structure your
information. In other words, put it in tables, lists, paragraphs, headings
and so on. Then use CSS to define how each of those things appears.
 
Regards,
Léonie.
 


  _____  

From: bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Gordon Keen
Sent: 22 February 2008 20:00
To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bcab] Re: Links on web pages and screen readers


Dear girl, you are too kind as usual, 

So it takes some degree of commitment on behalf of the web designer to set
up the CSS html web page. well if past performance is  anything to go on -
it ain't going to happen then.   Anything that requires any effort on the
part of the author is going to be binned straight away, time is money after
all.

So how does XTML differ, why would some nurdy web designer be more
comfortable in XTML rather than HTML using CSS?

Sorry, being a typical poor old man who is having difficulty understanding
the problems.


Regards,




G




From glorious Devon, England.

(Where the Sun always shines and all the children are above average.) 
On 22 Feb 2008, at 18:32, Léonie Watson wrote:


    Senior moment? Never! You're quite right. CSS can bring a lot of
benefits to web design. Of course, it can be done badly, like anything else,
but used in the right way it can help considerably.
 
    You can use it to present content in different ways for different
people. It can make the ability to choose between different colour schemes
much easier. It also gives rise to the possibility of overriding the
website's default styles with something completely personal.
 
Regards,

Other related posts: