27 Dec
2008
27 Dec
'08
2:39 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
structure so as to better convey the information
within - it's not the
ideal mechanism for "busy" graphics-laden interactive interfaces (that
it's the only mechanism we have these days is beside the point :-)
Interestingly, the way that web design has been going over the past few
years is towards simply-structured pages, and then CSS to do all the pretty.
With the advent of Javascript frameworks like jQuery, Dojo, prototype.js
and so on, it's become easier to do clever tricks in the browser and
keep sites portable - the library deals with things like coping with
browser-specific quirks, so you don't need to concern yourself with
them. One fairly popular trick, for example, is to make an expanding
navigation menu tree consisting of nested lists, with the sub-nav lists
hidden until they are moused over. If you display this with Javascript
disabled or on a non-Javascript browser, or if a search engine indexes
the page, then the links just appear to be nested <ul> tags.
We've come a long, long way from the fussy, fidgety, usually-broken
Javascript twiddly things of old. But it's interesting to see that the
best way to make your pages work is to keep the markup very simple -
even Mosaic would render a good, well-designed modern site readably if
not visually correctly.
Gordon