Brian Hantman (University of MD, Baltimore) presented a session titled “Thinking Outside the Table: Designing the Websites with CSS and XHTML,†yesterday morning at the EduWeb Conference in Baltimore.
Aba Blankson, a Webmaster at Cornell University, is one of the seven very nice people who agreed to share their notes with all of us who couldn’t attend the EduWeb conference this year. This is Aba’s first post about the conference.
We’ve all done it before… ‘misused’ HTML by controlling the presentation of our web pages. We’ve forced pixel-perfect design by using tables..nested within tables… nested within even more tables! That was the standard; a perfectly suitable solution to any design problems. Well, as speaker Bryan Hantman found, when you look under the hood of a table-based website, things are not so pretty.
In his presentation Bryan cited his own experience as a webmaster at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, and talked about why and how we can all ‘think outside the table.’ Specifically, he advocated separating the structure, presentation and behavior of our websites by using cascading style sheets.
Some web developers have done just that. To those of you who have people in your organization still stuck on table –based design, wouldn’t you love to convince them to take one tiny step toward style sheets? I’ve found that sometimes its easier to buy-in when ideas come from the “outside†— even if outsiders say the same thing you have been saying for a while.
So here it is… your “outside†information …courtesy of Bryan Hantman.
Why use style sheets?
- Simpler to develop and maintain the website
- Forward compatibility with future browser versions
- Faster downloading and rendering
- Better accessibility
- Better search engine rankings
- Adaptations across media types
How can you get started with style sheets?
CSS Zen Garden
Meyer Web
Max Design
WestCIV
StyleGala’s review on ALA