Where's the HTML and where's the structure?

[Hexen53]

Sorry Remi I was too busy rambling to notice your post!

Ron

[Spinny]

For a band's website or for showing off your artwork it would be great but for many text heavy sites that need structure I don't think it works.

If I may duck the incoming and make a remark: why would anyone else want to use WD in the first place? To me the two examples you cite represent nearly the sum total of why one has web pages in the first place, at least from my (graphics geek) perspective. If you work in other domains, great, and you shouldn't use this tool for such purposes--the "structure" you're endorsing seems pointless to me--again, why I'm the target demographic for this sort of software and you're not. To me the Design Is All.

[covoxer]

A knowledged (X)HTML/CSS expert would use the following simple markup:

....

But, no you're on your WYSIWYG absolute position trip, don't care about semantic HTML and prefer to export a tag soup par excellence:

....

The problem is, you're lost in the idea to export a page the same as it's shown on Xara's canvas (the so often discussed WYSIWYG principle).

The first one is a plain unformatted text which you can easily insert into placeholder. You don't need to use wysiwyg tools to enter unformatted text.
First one will look unpredictably in a browser, second one will look exactly how you want it too.
So what's the point of using first one if it has no advantages from the designers point of view?

Now back to the accessibility. Let's take an example.

Here's the site exported with WD without any particular attention to the accessibility by the author:
http://webdesigner.xara.com/

Here's the NVDA, open source, free voice reader software:
http://www.nvda-project.org/

Open this site in Opera for example, and read with NVDA.
Do you hear any influence of the tag mess?
Is this inaccessible site?
Try, and you'll see. Or hear actually.

[covoxer]

As for the need for printed materials having to meet accessibility requirements. All UK Councils would be expected to be able to produce any of their publications in a format suitable for visually impaired if requested (no you can't just photocopy onto A3).

This would not help blind to read it. And you can zoom any page in modern browsers for visually impaired, so where's the problem with accessibility of the WD exported pages?

for many text heavy sites that need structure I don't think it works.

True.

[haakoo]

@John,

Did as you suggested and placed the <p>blabla</p> inside the placeholder.
It works but only the width is applied,meaning the totaltext is displayed
but is longer as the object(placeholder)is set to.
So using plain text in a placeholder doesn't fit the object representing the space.
This does work with pictures and flash

Hans

[Hexen53]

If I may duck the incoming and make a remark: why would anyone else want to use WD in the first place? To me the two examples you cite represent nearly the sum total of why one has web pages in the first place, at least from my (graphics geek) perspective. If you work in other domains, great, and you shouldn't use this tool for such purposes--the "structure" you're endorsing seems pointless to me--again, why I'm the target demographic for this sort of software and you're not. To me the Design Is All.

Many of the organisations I work with have websites that provide infromation and support related to health issues, homelessness, drugs misuse etc. Many of them also want websites that they can manage by themselves. Typically, designer guys are pretty protective of their designs and don't usually want civilians messing up their work. For me, I would rather they can manage by themselves - perhaps another reason why XWD is not so suitable in these circumstances.

As for structure, how about a discography page for the band?

<h1>Satan's Kittens - Discography</h1>

<h2>Album 1 - Black Metal Psychos</h2>
<p>Recorded 1999 at Hell Studios</p>
<ul>
<li>Track1 - Crap overdose</li>
<li>More Crap</li>
</ul>

<h2>7" Single - We Are Sorry</h2>
<p>Recorded 2000 at Kitten Central</p>
<ul>
<li>Track1 - Love overdose</li>
<li>More Love</li>
</ul>

etc

Structure is everywhere.

[Spinny]

In a very real sense I hear you, Hexen. Still...

I'm a software engineer in my day job. I know from coding, and standards, and structure. I know enough HTML to be dangerous, and I wrote my Master's thesis in LaTeX with a text editor.

When I come home and do graphics stuff it's because I enjoy it, I want to be creative and see my imagination come to life, faithfully reproduced. If I never see a single jot of HTML code in the process, so much the better. Coding is tedious, it's work, and if I wanted that experience I'd never leave the office. Keep <h1> tags and all that, I just want it to show up right where I want it on the page, and I don't want to have to spend time counting pixels or tags to do it.

They made WD just for people like me.

[Hexen53]

This would not help blind to read it. And you can zoom any page in modern browsers for visually impaired, so where's the problem with accessibility of the WD exported pages?
True.

I worked in a library where we had a Braille printer. Unfortunately the printer didn't work - fortunately nobody ever asked for anything in Braille.

Zoom into your page 500% (some people may need it) and where is your design? Often visually impared users will just want the text in a very large font, in their preferred colours - structure helps.

Two or three times I have come under criticism for providing pdfs on my organisation's website as visually impaired users find them harder to work with than Word docs - even though you can zoom in 1000s of times in a pdf!

I am not an expert on accessibility issues but I have provided several links to sites that are recognised bodies. Also Adobe, Microsoft, W3C and governments all have the issue high on their agenda and produce guidelines on these matters. Here is a bit on Adobe CS4s Dreamweaver take on accessibility: http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/p.../overview.html

Ron

[Soquili]

Just as a point of clarification would either Remi or Hexen please tell me what is the exact point of this thead?

I do not see where Xara advertised the program as being a replacement for HTML editors or code formatter or anything other than a graphics design tool for web pages.

For what is advertised the program does the work very well.

Are you lobbying to have Xara change the purpose for the program?

Do you want it to replace any other tools you already use?

I'm just curious as to why so much effort and posting is being put forth.

[Hexen53]

When I come home and do graphics stuff it's because I enjoy it, I want to be creative and see my imagination come to life, faithfully reproduced. If I never see a single jot of HTML code in the process, so much the better. Coding is tedious, it's work, and if I wanted that experience I'd never leave the office. Keep <h1> tags and all that, I just want it to show up right where I want it on the page, and I don't want to have to spend time counting pixels or tags to do it.

They made WD just for people like me.

Okay, but I need a <p>