Chapter 2

This chapter discusses the double cost of non standards design and the basics of design and building with them. Rather than manipulate HTML to address your content layout needs we should be developing the structure, presentation, and behaviors of our websites separately. Structure being the text data. Presentation being design of typography, color, placement… And behavior addressing function and effects. Using this method takes less time to create and much less time to change in the future.

By using standards our sites can degrade nicely in non compliant browsers. Even if our fancy smancy  javascript menu doesn’t display the user will still have usable navigation. And yes portable browser with no css support at all can still display the structure of your XHTML and enable the user to navigate your site.

At this time there are two approaches to this, strict compatibility and transitional compatibility. With a transitional approach one would still use a dash of outdated methods like tables (yes I said tables but rest assured I won’t use any on your site). With strict compliance we completely separate structure from presentation and behavior. Using valid XHTML and CSS as well as DOM based scripting for behavior.