[UPHPU] Question about content structure

[Sheri Bigelow]

On 7/19/06, Alvaro Carrasco wrote:
> Wade Preston Shearer wrote:
> >> Of course another option we Linux and OSX users are more familiar with
> >> is to simply use Open Office which can handle whatever format the docs
> >> are in now (doc, wp, html, etc) and simply export to pdf or maybe even
> >> better "ODF"
> >
> > Except that my point was that I don't want people "styling" the
> > documents. I would want them to send them in pure text and let me do
> > the styling.
> >
> I'm curious, what's the problem with letting the word processor save to
> html (with styling and whatever the user wants to do) and stick it in an
> iframe.
> If the issue is standards, i would argue that that's only an issue if
> there's significant difference on how the browsers render the page, if
> they render it pretty similar who cares that the hmtl is bad.
>
> - Alvaro

I think that creating standards html is a web design best practice and
generating html from a word processor isn't likely to get you valid
html (right now anyway). Plus, you can still create crappy, bloated
web pages using valid html, it's just messy. Benefits to doing your
own styling are 1) it will load faster, 2) it will look more
consistent across browsers and platforms, and 3) it will be more
search-friendly.

You're right about it being less of an issue for intranets, especially
if you have a limited number of browser/platform combinations to work
with. Keep in mind that styling in an SOP may be important to the
meaning of the document and users may need to add photos, charts,
tables, graphics, etc. So, I agree that it may not matter as much
about the code as long as it renders in a contained intranet
environment; but, if I had the time, I would still want the code to be
well-formed, fast-loading, and standards-based.