1. Cascading Style Sheets &
DII.UTK.EDU
A proposal to use cascading style
sheets rather than depreciated
techniques for the DII web site
2. Summary
Two-part proposal
Why we should use style sheets
How style sheets change the recovery
process
Interruptions
If you would like further explanation
Save your questions and discussion points
3. HTML is a Markup Language
Few understand this. None follow it.
<FONT>, <B>, <I> should not exist
Pages do not look like anything
4. What is a Style Sheet?
Separate form and function
Tells a user agent how to render
markup
Implemented by all browsers
5. Accessibility & Adaptability
CSS only provides a suggested layout
Choose adaptability or PDF-like control
WAP, PDA, handheld override our style
6. Advantages
Always download faster
Can be shuffled between levels with no
modification
If we cheat, we only cheat once
Can override bad markup throughout
the site with one !important sheet
Ease of migration to XHTML and XML
7. Misconceptions
Style-sheets are just another bleeding-
edge technology like Flash whose time
has not yet come.
First impression
“Style sheets rule!”
Isn’t this really web developer-centered
design?
We’ll be leaving people out.
8. Who do you want to leave out?
1. Complete usability over all platforms,
devices, and user agents
2. Minimal visual discrepancy across half
a dozen commonly-used visual user
agents
Why now? I wanted to present this idea before the stakeholders meeting so that, if accepted, the strategy and possibly timeframes could be revised before the stakeholders meeting.
This will seem irrelevant at first. The second presentation will bring it together. Please hold your questions to the end since I may address them later in the presentation.
I’m sure many of you understand this already. I didn’t learn it until three years of making web pages. When I heard markup and layout were different, I didn’t really understand.
A style sheet is just a document that tells a user agent how to render markup. All user agents use them.
Style sheet are designed to provide a suggested layout. One can either have PDF-like control of layout, or have adaptability.
See if you can put together some examples of one style sheet being applied to multiple pages. Talk about the toe page.
What isn’t a style sheet? Misconception number one comes from a bad first impression. The capabilities of style sheets completely overlaps and extends HTML’s functionality, so whenever one sees the underlines removed from links, or strangely colored scrollbars, one automatically blames style sheets. We have never gone to a site and said, “Woah, style sheets rock!” because when done correctly, the implementation is invisible.
The question isn’t, “Who do you want to leave out?” It’s, “How do you want to leave them out?”
Until style sheet penetration is to a sufficient level, we can configure the server to add site-wide deprecated markup.
Since I was hired for such a specific purpose, I would have no problem with you rejecting this proposal and going with a strategy of combined content and layout. I’m going to guess it’ll take another couple years for the site to degrade to a state of disrepair, and I’ll come on back!