The WD HTML structure furore

[covoxer]

If I was to design the layout and functionality of a website and later pass it to a web programmer to add additional features not found in WD, Is this possible to do?

This depends on what features are about to be added and on the programmer willingness to do it with this code. So the crrect answer can give you the programmer when you show him html generated by WD and explain what you want to add.

Also I know once this is done the code can not be taken back into WD, correct?

Correct. But some kinds of code developed by programmer can be embedded into your WD document. Just the way you embed snippets.

[behzad]

Maybe the best thing to do is show them the demo site made by xara and see what they think of the code and if they can work with it.
I am thinking more like CSS , database etc.

[covoxer]

Maybe the best thing to do is show them the demo site made by xara and see what they think of the code and if they can work with it.
I am thinking more like CSS , database etc.

Yes.

[Zenarcher]

For those interested in the details of the Court Case quoted above the outcome was:

SOCOG was ordered to engage the following by 15 September 2000:
including alt text on all images and image map links on its Web site
providing access to the Index of Sports from the Schedule page
providing access to the Results Tables to be used on the Web site during the Sydney Olympic Games

SOCOG refused to comply with the order and was later ordered to pay Bruce Maguire $20,000 for its refusal to comply


From:http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html

[visual-net]

Here's an excerpt from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative:

"For Web developers using today's authoring tools, development of accessible Web sites first requires an awareness of the need for Web accessibility, then a deliberate effort to apply WCAG 1.0. It may require working around features of authoring tools that make it hard to build accessible Web sites. For instance, some authoring tools still produce non-standard markup, which can be a barrier for accessibility. Authoring tools that conform to ATAG 1.0 provide built-in support for production of accessible Web sites."

....

For many people WD is the perfect tool and maybe it will be for me one day.

Luddite Ron

Hello Luddite Ron,

i have sait this in an other thread:
I' m in websites business since 2000 and started first with a WYSIWYG Editor called Visual-Style from Symantec - it had one of the cleanest and best W3C conform standard codes for a WYSIWYG Editor.
Then i turned over to NetObjects Fusion - every W3C validation test failed but every browser-test with the average market browsers stayed the testing so why worry - and i created the same site i had created with Visual-Style in less than half of the time and with the same optical professional result - and this is important for my customers, because they pay every minute and hour i design their sites, so it saves the money of my clients.

The big question in business is:
What are my customers and their customers - what did they need?
If they want a barrier-free website i do not use XARA Web Designer, because it can not reach this goal; for this i use Fusion or Joomla or other tools - we webdesigners cannot only live with one program even if the name is Dreamweaver - The customers of today want fast results and maybe a solution wich cannot be handled only from one tool - but XWD can help to create a site fast and if you only take the design aspect:
Exactly like i want it - if i need to add H1 formating or other things i had to have a next website-editor to edit this for instance in DW - it worked

- i cannot count the moments i opended a joomla template in DW to change its look and design to modify it for the need of a customer....
So if this is a thing wich has to be done with a professional CMS why not even with a less professional tool.

O.K. One thing i totally share with you is the need of H1; H2 and so on formattings - this is something wich should be a program setting by default.

I think the developers created a very good program from the designers point of view, but maybe it depends on this that in the beta-team there are not so much website-developers involved wich earn their dayly money with it, so they cannot hear the voices and the needs from us - here is one suggestion how easy H1, H2 formatings can be implemented in this program.

Michael

[Hexen53]

To Luddite Ron:

Well, you have told all this before, why to repeat? To hear all the same answers again? Ok, you don't ask anything here actually so no answers, but few comments to clarify some things.

1. Sites produced by WD are accessible. I have already demonstrated this. The blind person can read the site and understand information on it. Even without special attention form the designer in that case. With attention it may be even better. So all those talks about inaccessibility are irrelevant.

Hi John

I was repeating what I said because the new thread was misrepresenting what I originally was talking about - confusing it with a desire to code html or to see the html.

You are correct when you say that WD pages pass accessibility checks. Not all of them all the time but not much worse than other sites. I tried them with Wave, TAW (not so good), Site Valet etc. But these automated tests also need to be done in conjunction with a human check.

Gary's pages come up with no accessibility issues in WAVE http://wave.webaim.org/ but when you select "Outline View" you will get the message " This page has no headings or document structure so an outline cannot be generated" (their red). The "Structure/Order View" is also quite interesting when compared to more traditional html pages. The "Text-only View" doesn't show the text properly, clipping the beginning of each line.

It is true that Sitepoint and others do show some accessibility issues but they do make a great effort to be correct - use WAVE to look at the "Outline View" and "Text-only View" in sitepoint.com and it is clear to see the structure of the information.

I have no great desire to keep harping on about accessibility/structure so I will shut up.

LR

[Soquili]

You could be right, but I think it's a small concern. Most people probably won't base their buying decisions on one or two thread's contents alone. Plus these arguments are quite two-sided as well, providing balance. But you're right to echo what I was saying above about the unhelpfulness of repeating the same arguments though (but the solution is not to lock my thread like the other similar threads; it will just pop up elsewhere and cause more repetition).

Xhris there was no mention of any intent to close your thread. I was attempting to have people see the futility of all the posting. It is like a treadmill...you can walk or run for hours but you never actually get anywhere other than the treadmill.

John is providing excellent feedback but some are not interested in hearing it, only in repeating their own desires.

The application is only a few days old. Give it time to evolve. Take time to use it for what it was designed to do and make note of the areas that could be improved. After careful analysis compose a recommendation for improvements and give things time to be evaluated for feasibility.

The immediate posting of perceived deficiencies appear to be more of a knee jerk reaction rather than a considered evaluation. Repeating the same statements does not mean anyone will receive a different answer.

Give the Xara Team time to evaluate and test and re-evaluate and re-test if needed.

No program can be everything to everyone.

As a professional Web Developer there are a wide selection of tools to use. Use the design abilites of Web Designer if they can be used in your work for prototypeing if nothing else.

Even if every suggestion put forth by the professional web developers were to be emplimented you would still need other tools for some aspects of your work.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hear, hear Bill.

[Hexen53]

Hi Michael

I have tried a variety of tools and my most recent is EW2 but I haven't had much time to get to grips with it. I did try loading a sample exported WD page into EW2 but I didn't find it at all easy to select stuff except in the code window!

The headings business: I had thought that if you highlight a piece of text and made it whatever size you need and rightclicked for a popup to choose the tag.

In the code for that text there is a <div> that sets the font sizes etc, followed by the <div> that positions the text and maybe they could be combined to include the font size in the heading:

<h1 class="t1" style="left: 200px; top:300px; font-size: 24pt;">My Heading</h1>

...or something like that but sometimes the first <div> has positional elements too so maybe I am oversimplifying a lot

Anyway the style sheet would need to be adjusted to make the styles of all the headings the same as the body.

Headings may be easier to implement as they are usually short and on one line whereas lists or even <p>s I can imagine would be complicated.

Cheers

Luddite Ron

[Paladin]

Hmm, thread's getting kind of long, but what the hey, one more post...

After having read the entire thread I think it could be summed up with, "Pick the right tool for the job." When I need to do work that will involve a dynamic ASP.NET data-driven site, I use Expression Web and Visual Studio 2008/Visual Web Developer because they have excellent support for that technology (and Dreamweaver has so little as not to count). For other sites, including those with dynamic PHP applications, I might opt for Dreamweaver CS4.

Now, for those occasional small local business 4-5 page "brochure site" contracts, or local clubs, civic organizations, etc., it appears that with XWD I will be able to turn out the kind of attractive, static sites that such clients are interested in having in significantly less time than it would take in the more sophisticated programs.

Granted, I probably won't want to bring them into either DW or EW, but then, why would I want to? The client couldn't care less what the HTML looks like, and wouldn't recognize it if he saw it. If he needs mods, open it up in XWD and change it. I could probably add some limited dynamic capabilities with the placeholder feature using PHP if needed. The client gets what he wants, I get paid, evahbody happy.

You don't use a carpet tack hammer to do framing, or a roofer's hatchet to hang drywall. I haven't even downloaded the trial of XWD yet, but I have checked the sample site and run it through Cynthia Says and the w3c validator, and I'm impressed. I wouldn't use it for a dynamic site, but I can think of a number of sites I've done that would have been quite handily accomplished in XWD.

That said, can I raise one more hand for a little bit of semantic markup? At least the heading tags would be a nice start... ;-)

Nice job, John, and I'm looking forward to what is yet to come. Now, off to download XWD and start experimenting...

cheers,
scott