User:Kim/reading/Dividing and Sharing

Femke Snelting, Constant Verlag, 2008
against the differentiation between content and presentation in the creation of websites

• Webstandards as evolving set of agreements on how digital information should be structured and organized into compatible units
  • separate Webs code in HTML for content and CSS for form
• this working premise of W3C states that separating content from presentation facilitates exchange of information (of 'true information' or 'meaning')

• lack of standardization: early on browsers where not compatible, each fighting over their market share, inventing their own mark up
  • resulted in problems for designers, content providers and users (impossible to predict what user will see on their screen)
• Call for standardization Acid test introduced competing for compliancy rather than difference between browsers

avoiding tagsoup

• a standardized web is an accessible web (allows for interpretation of web through multiple devices including screen readers)

separating 'content' from presentation

• HTML was designed for semantic markup (not stylistic: < i > got replaced by < em >)
• in W3C approach 'content' is treated as formless matter
  • legitimized by the idea that only when information is liberated from any specific instance (device, format ...) it can travel freely between media
  • this is a cloud idea, assuming the system itself (on which information/ content is based and travels) is neutral
  • basic problem: lies in assumption that the same content, that is presented in different ways, does always communicate the same message (but with changing context and readers, cultures, education, it doesnt)