Web Standards
Publishing a web page in 2001 isn't as easy as it seems. Sure, Word supports HTML,
and most browsers provide tools that hide the details of HTML from the document.
But when you start looking around the Web on the subject of HTML, its easy to
get overwhelmed with too much information, not to mention a sour taste in your
mouth regarding those tools you were so blithely using.
After the acronym shock, you get two impressions:
1. The concept of 'web page' has changed dramatically.
2. There is no mature or dominant technology that defines or enables this new
concept of 'web page'.
To make sense of it all, it helps to look at the boundary conditions of the problem
of delivering content on the Internet:
1. Client software is inhomogenous (but becoming less so)
2. Data formats are inhomogenous (and becoming more so)
3. Bandwidth is generally latent and slow (but becoming less so)
4. People want it to be like TV but interactive - that is, engaging on a visceral
level.
It might be interesting to draw a hierarchy of data structures and protocols,
but I don't know enough to make one. Suffice to say that lots of data structures
are being recast into XML these days.
For my personal web site, the best course of action is to go with the standards
compliant LCD (least common denominator) approach, with frugal use of more advanced
technology. My only concession to 'high tech' is with CSS, which I really dig.
Finally, I want to ask all of my visitors to upgrade their browsers. (Another
concession might be to have some parts require a Java Plug-In).
To ensure this sort of compliance I cannot rely on standard end-user tools. I
must take a more 'hands-on' approach to web-document creation. Homesite seems
to fit the bill.
Since I am taking this hands-on approach, I also have to consider deployment,
file organization, and link organization issues. For a small site like mine, this
shouldn't present a problem.