Web-site Development Tools

[John M. Morris]

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, JQ Johnson wrote:

> Here's a test for all you hand-coders.  Suppose you have a web page
> containing a large table (say a half dozen columns and a score of rows,
> with some spanned rows and some cells containing nested tables.  Swap
> columns 2 and 3.

Here are a couple of even better questions:

1.  Why is such a complicated construction in a library webpage in the
first place?

2.  Will that page be viewable on Lynx?

3.  Will (insert name of preferred M$ 'solution') automatically create a
text only version and link it?

4.  If both 2 and 3 are NO then what other steps are you now taking or
plan to take in the near future to ensure that your site is accessable
from by a user with a text browser/screen reader setup?

Libraries should already be thinking in terms of ADA compliance because it
is only a matter of time before it becomes a requirement. It is a lot
easier to build a correct site NOW than rush to convert years of
acculumated output to meet an imposed deadline. 

Basically there are two general catagories where a table such as you
describe would be seen:

1.  Someone being overly clever (and usually fast and loose with HTML
compliance) to create a 'kewl' page.

2.  To actually presenting tabular data.

Number 1 is a bad thing so who really cares if a tool makes it easier to
write bad code.  In case #2 it is usually a matter of importing an
existing table of data.  In such a case it is totally acceptable to use a
spreadsheet that can write HTML and then clean up behind it with a text
editor and insert it into the larger document.  At which point your
example of moving columns around becomes a simple matter of editing the
original spreadsheet, a job any spreadsheet worthy of the name has been
able to do since the 8bit days. 

Using specialized tools to create figures, tables and pictures to insert
into an otherwise plain text format are even accepted practice among
diehard LaTeX/Troff/etc users.  It is even in keeping with The Unix Way of
having specialzed tools do one job well while interoperating with many
other similar tools to create a complete work environment.

John M.      http://www.dtx.net/~jmorris         This post is 100% M$ Free!
Geek code 3.0:GCS C+++ UL++++$ P+++ L+++ W+ N++ w-- Y+ 5+++ R tv- b++ e* r%
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