WWW: Beyond the Basics

Chapter 13 - HTML

13.4.1 HTML Good Practices - How to ensure everyone can get your information

The Web was designed to be a way to share information regardless of platform and software.

Certain interests see the Web as a commercial arena where there is money to be made by continually upping the stakes with new (often platform specific) features, requiring new soft- and hard-ware to get to the content.

The users are an unpredictable lot who just want to get to the content without a lot of fuss (strangely enough, pretty much what HTML was meant for).

Granting there are certain things that text cannot do (like the graphics-only geometry lesson or the Java-powered Visible Human project), there are ways to compromise and convey most of the content out there relatively painlessly.

Tips for designers:

Next we'll look at how non-standard HTML fragments the Web, defeats its original intent of device independence, and keeps users from getting information.


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Copyright © 1996 Pris Sears, All Rights Reserved

Pris Sears <sears@vt.edu>