[Sigia-l] Web Standards and I.A.s
PTrebukov at SpencerStuart.com
PTrebukov at SpencerStuart.com
Fri Apr 9 10:39:45 EDT 2004
Tom,
I absolutely agree. You can put all classes in one file and write
everything in the way convenient for you as IA.
No questions about this.
There is another problem here. Styles (CSS) are not about content or
IA. Styles are about presentation. One of the main
goal of CSS is: Separate content from presentation. CSS syntax and
techniques were designed to help designers and developers
to separate content from presentation, not to connect content to
presentation.
It's not a question can you use styles for AI needs or not. You can.
Question is how it will affect your project and your work.
Just couple of examples:
--- You probably will have to create and enforce naming convention
so names of your classes will be recognizable (e.g. ai-myclass1).
--- Coding rules should be developed for CSS coding as well as for
HTML coding.
--- Spec for each page should include section dedicated to IA
needs so developers will use your classes no matter what (I'm sure
you familiar with section of Christopher Schmitt's book where
selectors described. And you know that class is just one of 7 possible
selectors and class is the only one type of selectors which
make sense for you as AI).
--- How to check proper usage of your classes? Class "Person"
should be used only for elements related to person info.
What about other places where red border required? It's very
easy to use your classes improperly.
You have to check this during the development and during the
testing, so it's not only technical problem. It's also
an organizational problem.
--- What about maintenance? Six month later graphic designer will
change border color on the page #339, so technically
for this page you class is not necessary anymore. But
developer must not remove your class from HTML codes,
developer must use techniques to override your class. Is it
technical problem? In most of cases not at all.
But it's could be serious organizational problem.
And much more. Probably it's a good topic for another discussion,
but how it's related to Information Architecture?
Yesterday or day before yesterday somebody (I'm sorry, I don't
remember name) send very good email.
It was something like "Nothing to do with information architecture,
a lot to do with information architect"
I absolutely agree with this. Just one addition: take part "a lot
to do with information architect" really
seriously.
Pavel Trebukov
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Trottier [mailto:tOM at Abacurial.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 3:58 PM
To: list at vanderwal.net; Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com; sigia-l at asis.org;
Trebukov, Pavel
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Web Standards and I.A.s
On Thursday, April 08, 2004 at 13:19, <PTrebukov at SpencerStuart.com>
wrote:
>
> With this approach you can have more then one CSS class which
actually
> provides the same set of styles (<div class="Entity"> could have red
> border and blue background
> and <div class="Person"> could also have red border and blue
> background).
> It's could be even good idea in case you want to change something
> eventually but
> from development/maintenance point of view having absolutely
> identical classes is
> not the greatest idea (especially if it's not documented and you
> have to work with more then one CSS file).
That's not a problem working with CSS.
When creating classes with common attributes to start, you can declare
them like
Person, Entity {text: red; border: thin cyan}
and then classes Person and Entity share the same properties.
To investigate existing CSS, you just change one property outrageously
to pick out the stuff in the class, eg add BORDER: THICK RED; to the
property list. There may even be some tools to indicate which styles
are being applied. There are certainly tools to manage CSS styles
nicely. Even Dreamweaver tries.
In practice, you would have IA-named styles declared only in one CSS
file and override any details or set the page layout using different
names, perhaps in other CSS files. DIVs can be nested, with themselves,
or all block HTML tags.
Read the CSS Cookbook by Christopher Schmitt
tOM
> Pavel Trebukov
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Trottier [mailto:tOM at Abacurial.com]
>
> I suggest that styles (CSS, Ventura publisher, Word, ...) are best
> used
> by naming the types of content in the repository output, then creating
> a style sheet (eg .css file) with the rules for displaying them. EG,
> in CSS, use <div class="Entity">xxxx</div>
>
> The advantage is that the markup language is used just the way it's
> meant to, marking up the meaning/significance of the text or whatever
> enclosed, and you don't mix it up with HTML markup, and you can use IA
> names for consistency. Only the style sheet is used to adjust
> presentation, and it will be consistent with different repositories or
> editions of a repository.
>
> Or use XML with a style sheet - no DIV required.
>
> It is also easy to program repository output.
>
> tOM
>
> On Thursday, April 08, 2004 at 11:20, <PTrebukov at SpencerStuart.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Using styles for IA needs creates some questions.
> > For example:
> > 1. Class is not the only way how to specify styles and pretty
> > often it is not the best way.
> > And IA usually is not the person who makes decisions how to
> > create styles.
> > So, to rely on specific way to specify styles (like class
> > name) IA have to at least supervise
> > this process on all stages.
> >
> > 2. What is more important for your project: ability to select
> > all
>
> > <h2> elements with class "facet" or
> > create styles in the best way to provide page layout?
> > Solutions to achieve these goals could be different.
> > It's better to have an answer from very beginning.
> >
> > 3. Consider cascading effect of CSS.
> > Any setting could be overridden buy another setting which is
> > specified in another CSS file or directly in html file.
> > And it could be done without any reference to existing class
> > name (by using element's id for example).
> > So, if you need just to select all elements of particular
> > class it will work, but if you are also interested in
> > specific settings it's not reliable.
> >
> >
> > Pavel Trebukov
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On
> > Behalf
>
> > Of Thomas Vander Wal
> > Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 8:42 AM
> > To: Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com; sigia-l at asis.org
> > Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] RE: Web Standards and I.A.s
> >
> >
> > Lyle,
> >
> > Yes, we largely agree.
> >
> > In short Standards impact IAs very little, but having developers
> > that
> > use Standards provides an IA the ability to have their vocabulary
for
> > the information structure adopted and integrated into the semantic
> ...
>
> ------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur -------
> ,__@ tOM Trottier +1 613 231-6115
> _-\_<, 758 Albert St.,Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8
> (*)/'(*) N45.412 W75.714
> <a href="http://Abacurial.com">Abacurial Information Architecture</a>
> ---------------
> I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too
> much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -Thomas
> Jefferson 1743-1826)
>
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------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur -------
,__@ tOM Trottier +1 613 231-6115
_-\_<, 758 Albert St.,Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8
(*)/'(*) N45.412 W75.714
<a href="http://Abacurial.com">Abacurial Information Architecture</a>
---------------
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too
much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -Thomas
Jefferson 1743-1826)
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