I have a dream…that the UT Home Page will be modernized. It has been over 3 years since our last major redesign, and while the information design, branding and content are still on the mark, there is plenty of room for technical improvements. (Lord, isn’t that always true?)
Now my dream is coming true! So, for your preview pleasure, I’ll share the work of my fabulous team mates, Diane, Carol, PJ and Rachel. In reality, I think everyone on our team has contributed.
What a great opportunity to explore the benefits of modernizing to web standards.
| old | new | |
|---|---|---|
| filesize | 31.54 kB | 18.96 kB |
| doctype | HTML 4.0 Transitional | XHTML 1.0 Transitional |
| number of images | 35 | 11 |
| number of layout tables | 5 | 0 |
| fonts | fixed | scalable |
| rollovers | javascript | css |
| semantic markup | title | title, headers, lists, divs |
Now, what do you think? What other benefits have we garnered by modernizing to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, smart CSS layout and semantic markup? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Some niggles:
1. I find it disconcerting when the white submenu of the “Side Navigation” navbar overlaps the text of the “newsarea” div. I’d suggest either putting a burnt-orange border around the submenu, or putting a left-margin on the “newsarea” div to push it away from the navbar (as the current site does).
2. The “Inside UT” rollovers would work much better if you didn’t turn them burnt-orange “onmouseover”. There’s altogether too much burnt-orange on the page to use that as an “onmouseover” effect. Rather than making the item with focus stand out, it makes it seem to fade into the background.
Other than that, it’s a vast improvement over the previous page. I look forward to these improvements trickling out to the rest of UT’s web site(s).
I’d move to HTML 4 Strict (or Transitional if you really need it), as there are no advantages for putting our xhtml (assuming it doesn’t affect SEO).
Anne van Kesteren and Roger have written about this.. (here for example.
Ehm, Here’s a much better article about what I’m trying to say.
James, I’m reading these articles right now. Good food for thought. As soon as this all sinks in…I’m sure I’ll be bouncing down the hall to talk to my team mates about it!
Strict DOCTYPEs are always better than Transitional. And Glenda is 4 very trivial changes away from this document validating as XHTML 1.0 Strict.
As to (Appendix C) XHTML 1.0 versus HTML 4, I think that’s a very dumb religious war, of absolutely zero significance in practice. There are other things that Glenda and her team could more profitably spend their time on than converting from XHTML to HTML 4.
Agreed. Strict is important. XHMTL vs. HTML is a minor issue.
Don’t forget maintainability in your list of benefits. I don’t have hard numbers, but it takes me far longer to update an old page (table layouts, spacer gifs, etc.) vs. a page with a clean separation of content and style.
“XHMTL vs. HTML is a minor issue.”
It’s not if you send it with the correct mime type. Send it without, and you’re just sending html anyway (more importantly, it’ll be interpreted as html anyway – all of xhtml’s possible advantages are negated).
So let’s say you’re using content negotiation to send it to some browsers as xhtml+xml. You’ll be able to take advantage of the benefits of xhtml, but you also have to deal with the downsides: everything has to validate, complete with the &’s and everything, because browsers interpret it with draconian precision. That basicly rules out pretty much every dynamic website…
…and Internet Explorer….
…so…you’re gonna send it as html, negating any possible advantages you might have while introducing new disadvantages, so just use html!
The day when the UT main page is sent with an XML MIME-type is far, far in the future, if it ever happens at all. It’s not even worth bringing the subject up. Glenda and her team have many, many other things to think about that are of more pressing interest than converting the main UT website to “real” XHTML.
Given that they are going to be sending out
text/htmlfor the forseeable future, it makes zero difference whether they are sending out “Appendix C” XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4. Both will be parsed as HTML, and will yield correct results. There is no reason to prefer one dialect over the other.Again, Glenda and her team have more important things to worry about.
For instance, if the sample page is any guide, she and her team have not come up with a policy about marking up abbreviations and acronyms (either manually or programmatically). Are you seriously suggesting that they waste their time converting XHTML 1.0 to HTML 4 instead?
That’s what I do. My site benefits from doing so, and so it’s worth the extra effort. There are certainly other sites at UT which would derive similar benefits. The UT main page does not.
So give it a rest.
Guys, I so appreciate the debate, and must say…that I really want to be a model citizen on my home page. So, honestly, I’m hoping to go to XHTML 1.0 Strict and Jacques, good point on abbreviations and acronyms…I do need to get that cleaned up as well.
Ahhhhh, the power of blogs…asking people what they think…and having YOU effect what I do. Love it!
I don’t know why this irks me so, but it does.
The whole point of Appendix C is to make XHTML (which conforms to Appendix C) work seamlessly in HTML User Agents. Saying that HTML 4 is “better” than Appendix C XHTML is tantamount to saying that the W3C did their job wrong. Which is, AFAIK, incorrect.
(To be fair, the page, as it stands, does not strictly adhere to Appendix C. You need a
langattribute, in addition to thexml:langattribute.)I’d much rather see UT main page “upgraded” to XHTML 1.0 Strict, than “downgraded” to HTML 4.01 Transitional, to satisfy someone who thinks the W3C f%#$d up when they wrote Appendix C.
Glenda, you might want to look at my thoughts on marking up abbreviations and acronyms. Not necessarily applicable to the UT main page, but at least food for thought.