Re^6: Web forum markup language and the Monastery ([[...]])

And, actually, CSS creates content-independant presentation that HTML largely lacks. When you use <b> tags, for example, you're saying, "present this content in bold format." But what if I'm visually impaired and using an audible browser? CSS allows the page designer to say "on the screen, make this bold, on a printer, make it italics, and when spoken, surround the text with these words." That, Ytrew, is content-independant presentation.

Right......... Now, name us a couple of large websites that actually use CSS to do stuff like this. Does Perlmonks use CSS to cater for audio browsers?

Oh, and about blind people - I know quite a lot of them, including an ex-girlfriend. They all use IE to browse webpages, and use their screen reader to hear what's on the screen. Simple webpages is what they prefer, any meaning added to pages using CSS is lost on them. And forms and image maps can drive them to madness.

Comment on Re^6: Web forum markup language and the Monastery ([[...]])

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Re^7: Web forum markup language and the Monastery ([[...]]) by Tanktalus (Canon) on Jan 17, 2005 at 15:51 UTC
Not being blind, nor having a browser capable of interpreting CSS's audio, I would not have noticed. And CSS should not be adding meaning - only presentation. CSS allows your web pages (content) to be much simpler (and smaller), shunting presentation off to another file. This should allow your screen readers to function easier, and, as time goes on, audio browsers will likely come about (I can imagine IBM wanting to extend Firefox for this, and then donating the code back to the community, in exchange for the ability to throw Firefox on all of its products' CDs - that would be worth millions to a company like IBM). CSS is looking forward to that day with current standards. Don't get me wrong - CSS isn't perfect. But it's a heck of a lot better than pure HTML.	[reply]
Re^8: Web forum markup language and the Monastery ([[...]]) by Anonymous Monk on Jan 18, 2005 at 15:17 UTC
Oh, I very well know what CSS should be used for. I also know what HTML should be used for, and what the intended usage for the Internet was (sharing of (computing) resources). But only the most naive person would escape the notion that the web is mostly about presentation - whether that's being delivered by CSS or HTML attributes. Most web authors, and an even greater percentage of clients only care how something looks - and not about being good citizens. As for screen readers, they just do that: read the screen, or rather, text in widgets. It doesn't matter for a screen reader whether CSS is used to color a text red, or a FONT element. It may be tuned to distinguish between bold/normal font, but again, it doesn't matter what caused the boldness. It does pay attention to links though. Pages that consist purely of clickable images (and no ALT text) sound like "LINK LINK LINK LINK" (but then very very fast). If you want to cater for blind people, you'd be wrong to think that CSS will do the trick. You should focus on the content - not the presentation, and not the separation of presentation and content (of course, that's still a good idea, but mostly for a programmers point of view. It would help if browser actually allowed for user supplied style sheets, but that isn't commonly found on browsers. Even something simple as setting the fonts and fontsizes for P and H1 to H6 seems to be lost after the Mosaic browser). Don't get me wrong either. I'm not saying CSS is useless. But from the moment the first style-sheet aware browsers were available (1994/1995 - using DSSSL, no CSS available at that time), I predicted that it wouldn't change the web. It would still be about presentation, and little content. And CSS only makes it easier to make webpages that are hard to understand if you don't confirm to the presentation the author intended. And unfortunally, history hasn't proven me wrong.	[reply]